So it turns out, right, that the cinema is much cheaper in Belfast than in London. Like, yes, okay, I get a student discount and I get a carer in free, but still, tickets for both of us came to the grand total of £5. We'd wandered off to see Mortal Engines on the strength of jeannette_ng's recommendation. It was absolutely gorgeous (if a little obvious and rather short on On-Screen Queers, alas, I had high hopes for several Lesbians but It Was Not To Be); consider this encouragement to go and see it.

Today we wandered a couple of miles down the river to the Botanic Gardens, via Ormeau Park, where we saw a lot of people wearing I Met Dippy stickers (but did not in fact see Dippy, having failed to realise that that web page notwithstanding they were in the Ulster Museum, not the Tropical Ravine, so we'll have to wander back down, Oh No).

The rose garden is beautifully laid out even if it was mostly empty of roses, being the time of year that it is. We met a songthrush and a cloud of starlings. The Tropical Ravine itself had several stems of bananas working quite hard on growing up; they were very pleased about their Wardian cases (which we also met at Biddulph Grange Garden); I'd not realised that Venus flytraps are down to a wild population of ~30,000; we were introduced to the Bat Flower; apparently the "trunks" of tree ferns are in fact rhizomes; and I'm sure there were Several Other Facts but they currently escape me, as they do.

We also visited the Palm House, where I pointed out lots of Exciting Foliage to Adam and was particularly excited about a Cotyledon orbiculata sp. (it's fuzzy! with little fingery protuberances on the ends of the leaves!), to the extent that apparently the member of staff wearing a Belfast City Council-branded fleece & hovering to shoo people out and lock up doors decided that (i) I knew how succulents worked and (ii) I was adorable, and he sort of ambled over and with very little ado reached round to the back, broke me off a stem, and handed it me. I am DELIGHTED and I have NOWHERE TO KEEP IT and now it's... sat... on the coffee table... where I sincerely hope it will grow some roots.

Whereupon, in addition to having cross-pollinated an aliquot of my sourdough starter with local yeasts, I will have Another Succulent as A Souvenir.

This... is what I am like now.

e OH RIGHT AND the ADDITIONAL GOOD PLANT FACTS I forgot to mention were that (1) Victorians had a proper moment over ferns, much as they did over diatoms and foraminifera, and in consequence the design! on custard creams! is intended! to be ferns!