Hokudai garden

I've been calling the Hokkaido Botanical Garden by its full name. On my birthday, we told our neighbors of our plans to go there and they were like "oooooh Hokudai garden!". Ah, much easier to say. Of course Hokudai is the nickname of Hokkaido University.

We didn't make it there for my birthday, as I shared in my last post. We did however, wait for the next sunny day (sorta sunny anyway, horrible weather those last two weeks) and then set off for Hokudai garden. SO very glad we did, even though the weather was looking as though it would fade on us fast! (and it did)

There are lots of pictures. And yes, mostly flowers, but the main reason I wanted to go was to check out the rose garden and peonies that hadn't bloomed yet when we went with my dad. 

Everything was so lush and green and full of texture. 

Oooooh now we are getting to the good part and our special surprise guest!!

 Pansies, peonies, roses... perhaps my top 3 favorite flowers? 

Ah but what about the cherry blossoms, lilacs, and zinnias?

There was a little lily pad pond in the middle of the rose garden. This is where I was deep in concentration when our guest showed up. Mind you, I'm taking pictures in drizzling rain, while Elisabeth sleeps in the stroller and Kevin's just waiting around for me like usual. 

Ooh dragonflies! 

No,  these were not the guests I'm talking about.

 THIS GUY IS!!! 

I hear Kevin loudly whispering "look up Anneli, look up!!" and sure as ... well there it was! My most favorite wild animal: the fox.

In a rose garden. 

Holy cow. 

He was super playful and quite tolerant of us few people, so he just went around doing his thing and I tried to play it cool... I took like 500 pictures but they were all crap compared to ones later on... so I'll share what I took in between the here and now...

I thought "what a pretty yellow rose"... oh it's "peace" they have this in Hatanpää arboretum! :)

He ran off but came back so I snuck into the rose tunnel and took a few photos.

He had a garden glove. :)

He really just wanted a nap eventually but he played along and let me follow him and take pictures. I swear he was posing for this one. 

 Then he went back to the rose tunnel.

Here he is in the rose tunnel when I finally broke away to leave. Bye fox friend!! :)

Definitely a highlight of our trip. 

Top 3?

Why must I list everything?? :D 

My birthday

My birthday came and went. By far the quickest year of my life! It seemed as though it was just yesterday I had a little one in cupcake pants :)

We met our neighbors downstairs for some takoyaki and they were by far the best we've ever had! One of our neighbors even made me a Japanese cheesecake (crustless), and we had ice cream too! :) Yum!

After lunch, we went to the Hokkaido University botanical garden...but it had closed for the day! Bummer! 

So instead we went to the end of Odori park hoping to get some good rose appreciation. In the past, my birthday has followed the same formula: rain, cake, good food, roses, photography. It's funny to me that some things just never change. ;)

Cool slides in Odori park.

Look at the blooms! :)

Kevin and I agreed that this rose was the most intense red we'd ever seen.

These towers were just gorgeous. This rose was Butterscotch if I remember correctly.

The roses were beautiful, but pansies will always catch my eye ;)

After the rose garden, we went to Kevin's school so he could check on his project and after that, we looked for Picante, a soup curry restaurant, which is by Hokudai. We found it tucked away and had an amazing soup curry dinner that has me salivating just remembering it! :) 

Great birthday indeed!