Finally stopped to hike here

Coppertone and I were looking for a new place to walk, hopefully with not a lot of mud given the recent rains.  Coppertone noted that we had overlooked the botanical garden over and over again despite several friends singing its praises.  Today seemed like to good time to try them out.

Our plan was to mostly stick to the main thoroughfare gravel paths.  Since the California Oaks section of the garden was said to be more muddy we opted to concentrate on the Asian Woodlands side of the park.  Our first goal was to walk straight to the back to the highest point in the garden.  Here some Tibetan prayer flags shadow a park bench which enjoys views over Sonoma Valley below and Sonoma Mountain.

We had recently walked at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.  Our impression was that the Sonoma Botanical Garden has more tagged plants in a given area.  Our walks were frequently interrupted by questions such as, "what's that?", which was usually answered by a sign.

As we worked out way roughly counter clockwise back down the hill we encountered a Far Eastern Garden area that the official map marks as Ting.  I've seen Ting referred to as a pavilion but I've also seen it mentioned as the Chinese character for listen.  Either use applies well here.  There are a number of small falls from two creeks that produce calming sounds.  A traditional wooden pavilion provides a nice spot to sit and soak everything in.

South of the Ting garden lies two oblong ponds, each with a pleasant waterfall on their north ends.  The "Lower Pond" is the largest of the two and features the tallest waterfall.  At this point we were taking one of the many smaller trails that paralleled the ponds.  At times it was a bit muddy here, but we didn't care.

We popped back out onto one of the gravel trails not too far from where we came in and decided to call it a day after 1.7 miles of walking.  Our plan is to come back in the spring with a picnic lunch and systematically map every trail segment in the park.