A Pretty Peacock
The Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden in Arcadia, California, is famous for its botanical garden collections of woodsy plants, trees and enchanting geographical gardens designed with plants indigenous to such places as “South America, the Mediterranean, South Africa, Australia, and Asiatic North America.”
In addition to the beautiful botanical gardens, the grounds are graced with numerous peacocks (peafowl), descendants of the original birds brought to the United States, from India, in 1879, by Lucky Baldwin.
On one hand, the sights and scenes around the arboretum can be intellectually stimulating, and an amazingly serene place to sit and read a good book. And at the turn of the head, it can be surreal when you step into a familiar landscape where a scene from a famous movie or television program was filmed. Just to name a few, the Queen Anne Cottage in Fantasy Island; landscapes from Tarzan and the Amazons adventure film; and portions of two Jurassic Park movies, and the list goes on.
The Arboretum is one of my favorite places to go to relax, think, pray, read a good book, or just walk around and watch the peacocks strut their stuff.
