The morning is still fairly quiet, and the trampling crowds have not yet arrived. We thought at this time that the gardens were a special unpopularly quiet spot. Cleverly entwined stone paths guided us away from the road into the gardens, with layered terraces of small plants from all around California. The plants are carefully labeled, but the labels in some cases are distracting from the beauty and the variety. The sound of traffic recedes into the distance as we make our way into the gardens, and discover a small pool with lilys, and all sorts of interesting sounds.
Dragonflies buzz about, multicolored flying machine-like organisms.
Frogs make themselves heard but not seen, and fish occasionally splash to the surface of the small warm pond. The summer sun probably makes this a difficult world for the aquatic life here. Tiger lilies rise on long thin stalks with sparse radiating green leaves, with a flower of brilliant black-spotted orange bowing down under its own weight. We sit in the shade of some young trees by this pond for a while, listening to it's stacatto composition. Then we walk towards a stream in a deep ravine.