The Beauty Of Hermes

Maia, rising from Daybreak Bay, shines westward over the Palomino River and down Olympic Avenue to Pilgrim Hill. From her balcony, the Duchess looks down to the bay and the Auroral Ocean while a colorful, singing nidiflex flies past.
-copied from here.

See also:

War And Peace
The Falkayn Domain
A Few More Details About Hermes
Mornings
Starfall On Hermes
Wardroom

Duchess Sandra wanders across Pilgrim Hill to the massive stone Old Keep, now housing records and a museum, surrounded by formal gardens and graveled paths. (As I remember, Old Keep with its records will be destroyed when the Hermetians successfully resist the Baburite occupation force.) There is an intricate design of flowerbeds, low hedges and occasional trees:

flowers are crimson daleflower and small whitefoot;
shrubs have ripe, vivid blue, skyberries;
trees are yellow-leaved birch and purple-leaved fallaron.

Starfall autumns are mild because the Hermetian axial tilt is less than Earth's. Sandra sees:

the gleaming river;
city roofs and towers stretching east to the bay;
farms and the peak of Cloudhelm to the west.

Earlier, in the Arcadian Hills, she had hunted a herpetoid cyanops with hounds and men from her estate. On a cliff-top meadow, she saw tiny white wildflowers studding the low lobate yerb, further hills and Cloudhelm.

Poul Anderson makes Hermes a very real place.