Remember the summer

We have had some real mild weather over the christmas period but I've been recovering from a chest infection so haven't been able to really do anything out in the garden despite me raring to get going. I ventured out today with my camera but the snow was falling periodically and I forgot to put the memory card back in the camera so hot footed it back indoors - cold, snowy weather always looks nicer from inside a warm house huh!

My chest infection actually began at the beginning of December pretty much as soon as we landed in Mexico - it was followed by two weeks of struggling to breathe, coughing and an inability to sleep. The infection also kick started a pretty awful asthma condition that flares up during times of a cold or allergies etc etc. Not to be selfish though - I passed it along to our friends that we went away with and they too suffered, my feelings of guilt that I had also ruined our friends holiday was slightly soothed by the fact that said friends are off to the Caribbean again in 3 days - yes, I'm jealous and wish we were going with them. Sseriously though, I did feel bad for them because we had an awful time of it and were actually glad to be going home so I do hope they have a great time in the Dominican Republic.
Anyways I took a few pictures of some of the plants in Mexico - the gardens were kept exceptionally immaculate and the gardeners were working every single day.
Not many were in flower at the time but the greenery was awesome all by itself

 It would be amazing to think that my Oleander would ever grow up to be this size but I doubt very much that it will based on the fact that it's still the 24" it was 3 years ago.

I have no idea what plant these leaves are from but they were huge and I'd love to grow some myself.

I have no idea what all this purple is but Mr TG really liked it and I must admit it certainly had some impact when grown in large areas.

The two together really did look lovely.

The coconut trees shed their coconuts regular and seeing the splatter mess on the concrete paths made me dread to think what damage one could do to a person.

 Here is a Mexican Coati, a member of the Racoon family but it's face is more doglike in my opinion, was amusing to watch them digging grubs out of the grass.

Iguanas were everywhere, often coming out during the day to warm up and would tolerate a person getting really quite close. I always tried not to annoy them but if they got uncomfortable they just scooted back into the hidey hole.

These Racoons (we referred to them as bandits) were a highlight for us, they are so funny to watch and were surprisingly respectful of certain boundaries such as the main dining halls. They had learned what was acceptable and would stay their side of the wall until a scrap was offered. Unfortunately American vacationers didn't understand the fascination of other holidaymakers and were really quite nasty to them, we had to tell a few people to back off and leave them alone - adults and children. I understand that they probably view them as vermin but for many of us they were lovely to see and watch and they really didn't cause an ounce of trouble unless you sat at the snack bar and deliberately encouraged them with scraps. One Racoon quickly turns into 30 when food is on offer and apparantly it can be a tad intimidating. The solution to that problem is quite obvious though really - don't feed them!

These dolphins were a bit of a quandry for me. In my opinion the pool, although large, was not big enough for 5 of them and I felt that the hotel should be making a larger area for them - they certainly have the ground space to do so.
Obviously the hotel makes money from tourists swimming with and learning to train with the dolphins so it was good to see that they were given proper relaxing time and playing time in between jobs - we jokingly referred to this as a policy of the dolphin union.
After 15 mins or so of playing they willingly appeared to return to where they knew they would be needed and they were very very well trained and all handlers appeared to be kind and knowledgable and insisted they were only touched in certain areas (not that I got to touch them but a friend did).
Like I said I have mixed feelings about intelligent mammals such as Dolphins being kept captive and I deliberately avoided going anywhere near the dolphinarium until the last day but I felt much better once I saw how well kept they were and was kind of glad I didn't return without seeing that.