Botanical Gardens: Temple

Butterfly on bougainvillea.
The brightly coloured bracts are not flowers.
The creamy inflorescence is just above the reddish modified leaves.

On our way up to the temple inside the Botanical Gardens.

Paul walks through a dragon gate near the top of the hill.

Looking up at the construction above the entrance to a sort of prayer cave.

A bucket-basin-clothesline vignette outside the prayer cave entrance.

Stone mural carving on the wall outside the prayer cave.

Focusing on the sphere in the center, you can see the marbles stuck in the niches.

Totemic mandala seat cushions.

This is what I'm calling the Prayer Cave.
It also appears to be a sort of storage closet.

The temple at the top of the hill.

Sorting baskets outside of temple dwellings.

Burning incense. I notice I keep trying to take pictures of things I smell.

From above the gate, over the ring of botanical garden forest, to the Xiamen cityscape.

Bamboo scaffolds hugging a construction site.
Need a ladder? Make one.

Vegetable garden below the temple and construction.

Another dragon. I'm starting to wonder when I'll finally see a living one.
It's strange what (in effigy so oft portrayed) expectations we create for our perception possibilities.
Like, if we create the possibility of existing dragons in our consciousness... oh, you know.
We simultaneously /know/ we won't see one, and yet wonder if we still might, despite our belief.

"Hey guyshlth, what'shlth up? I'lm jushltht hanglging outlth withlth thlishlth ball in mly mouthlshth.
Hey, couldtsh thlyou dthlo mle a flthavoursh andlth jlshusth sthortlsth of mlove thlhe ball tlo thle leftlth flor mle?"

Caution! Falling People! The strangest roadsign yet.

Waterlily nursery with a couple of grazing birds.