I'm back! Yes, sadly from Thursday until Sunday morning I have spent a weary time struggling with germ overload - I won't go into excessive details but suffice to say I appear to be somewhat lighter in weight and much wobblier of the knees than I was before.
So typically with glorious weather outside and garden and decorating jobs literally multiplying around me with every passing minute, I have been unable to do anything, not even read a book. Really frustrating. It also doesn't help that I seem to have been left with an oddly sore back and total lack of physical stamina so that even though technically 'much better' I haven't been able to do much in the last day other than mooch around grumbling inside and listlessly push the hoover in desperation (and if you know me, you'll know that I must be desperate if I'm resorting to the hoovering for entertainment...).
Anyway, in the spirit of lightening the mood a little, once I was able to hobble about satisfactorily by Sunday afternoon I insisted on being taken on our originally planned trip to a nearby village to enjoy their open gardens. What better to heal the soul and keep the children moving?
It was truly fabulous, and I came home as we always do from such forays into 'real' gardens (as opposed to those delightful but altogether more fantasy land versions surrounding stately homes which we love to visit just as much) completely full of reassurance and ideas and possibilities to try, practicalities to replicate...like the clever lady who kept a good 3 foot wide path up the back of every border so that trimming the hedge behind and reaching into the back of the border to weed or plant didn't involve the sort of plank balancing tightrope act that I have always performed to access the backs of my borders...
Of course far too many photos were taken but here are the best to help me remember:
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| Yes, there I am, inspecting the guttering! Crazy woman... |
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| I loved this white, single rose which scrambled lazily along the boundary wall |
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| Patches of longer grass left with dog daisies growing lustily |
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| I thought this method of leaving an officially unmown strip with dog daisies or other 'pretty' wildflowers could be useful to us in our ponderings over how to trim the grass either side of the rabbit fence? |
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| The most gorgeous house I think I've ever seen! |
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The pink peonies here were enormous - typically the Engineer in charge of the camera here - so no close up of the border (!) but shot of the lovely facade of the house instead...
These next shots are all of Charles Dowding's own garden Homeacres, which was one of the gardens open for the event. I was so excited to be able to see in reality the methods I am trying to learn to implement in our new garden. I even managed to discuss with the man himself a good approach to our composting situation, and needing to deal with so much grass clippings.
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| I dream of a polytunnel like this - but is Windy Acre too windy???After all, the greenhouse managed to move sideways 4 inches this winter... |
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| I was interested to see that in many places the pathways between beds were what looked to be 'semi-composted' bark or wood chippings, of which we have quite a stash in seams of the leafmould pile. |
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| Hot beds made out of pallets |
Next door to Mr Dowding's was a very different, but still vegetable based, garden, with another lovely timber framed building:
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| Although I wouldn't regard myself a fan of 'formal' type ponds normally, actually this one was quite spellbinding, and being at the waistlevel of people standing inside the room! |
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Typical - a shot of the wood shed - but not the sedum roof! Or the wildflower roof of the other shed! Grr...
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More lovely veg - you can just about see the sedum roof on the shed behind if you squint really hard...
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A jolly good afternoon was had by all - and just as we got back to the car after nearly 3 hours and hardly any whining from the children (miracle!) it started to rain! For once, excellent timing.
So refreshed and ready to shackle ourselves to the Windy Acre yoke once more, we run headlong into mid-June xxx
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