Diary catch up #8: December and our first festive season at Windy Acre!

You know how I said now that the weather is turning, all outdoor house-related jobs were ended? It seems that wasn't true...

The front porch roof sprang a leak!!!

Not at all what you want at the BEGINNING of winter.  And to be ignored at our peril.  There was nothing for it but to get the ladders out again and take advantage of a usefully dry and sunny Sunday afternoon to lift of some of the roof tiles and have a look.

This is what we found:

Well, that's not exactly the truth.  This is what it looked like after the Engineer had brushed away the masses of accumulated debris of leaf litter and twigs that had gathered along the battens.  I think the bitumen felt had been more intact before he did that - but with the simple pressure of his hand it just disappeared into bits!

I knew I had been right to remove the wisteria from that corner, I had seen it clambering under the gutter and into the roof during the summer. I suspect it had started to make it's way carefully through the dissolving felt, as truly only the insidious stems of wisteria can...and a lot of the debris was definitely the dead leaves and stems from that.  But there was lots more - either the wind had really been pushing leaves under the tiles and then they had got stuck around the wisteria stems, or a little feathered culprit had perhaps been 'assisting' the accumulations.

But I imagine it was my impatient tugging from below of the wisteria to get it out of the roof that did the final damage and created a hole through which the rain could then trickle - as it is about a month since I removed the wisteria, and we've only really had proper rain in the last few weeks.

I'm shocked at the state of the felt though - it is terribly brittle, and this roof is one of the 'newer' ones, done in the mid 1990s.  I do hope this doesn't mean that all the 1990s re-roofed sections are this bad.

So, as the daylight trickled (too quickly) away, the Engineer cobbled together a temporary fix by removing the batten, putting on a more rigid piece of the plastic floor protection stuff we use for multiple purposes (in order to stop the felt sagging any more over the top of the cavity wall) and then patched on some new felt that had been left behind after the bathroom roof was done.  New batten on the top - and all done!  Not quite...it then took us a further hour of swearing and jiggery pokery to get the tiles to sit back properly under the lead. This roofing lark is not as easy as the builders make it look, you know.

Hopefully this should see us through the winter, and then a 'proper repair' can be added to the growing list of next year's jobs...

After that, I needed cheering up so turned my attention to creating our Special Christmas Cards - the few I make for immediate family, I like to use one of my own paintings for.  Last year it was my Brambly Hedge inspired version of our big kitchen inglenook corner at the old house, complete with comfy fireside chair and glimpse of the table with suitably festive fayre.  I haven't done any pictures of this house yet (too tired and lacking inspiration until we've made it more 'ours'), so I chose one I'd done in painting class of a winter village:

My 'Winter Village' for the Christmas cards this year - I think it captures the mood of this year for us quite well.  Slightly mournful, but the chaos of the mud and snow covered road leads on to the promise of a shelter where you can hunker down against the elements, and 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' !

That job always feels to me like the real start of the festive period, and once done, I'm raring to go on the decorations.

I was VERY well behaved. I promise.  Even though there are more mantlepieces here to decorate...lots of beams that need stuff hanging from them...and many more deep windowsills that are yearning for magazine inspired festive beautification.  I didn't buy any new decorations.  I forced myself not to - I said we would make do with what we had this year, as who knows what new decorations might be essential once the renovations and building work are (eventually) finished?  Evie did a roaring trade in gorgeous red and white twisted paper stardrops, working all by herself following the instructions in one of the many Christmas magazines that had found their way into my trolley.

Alright, I did buy some more fairy lights.  Two more sets actually, I confess.  But I left it until the last week before Christmas and the supermarket were 'selling off' their Christmas decorations half price! Madness - we hadn't even passed the Big Day yet and they were clearing the shelves - no doubt ready for the Valentine's Day stock...

But I found the extra lights essential, as the daylight weakenend every day, the small deep windows let in less and less light and the interior, especially in the daytime, looked sadder, shabbier and gloomier.  We needed twinkling lights and swags of greenery!!!

The lounge inglenook proved the most troublesome - no mantleshelf to hang the decorations from!  A begging request had to be made in triplicate to the Engineer for some nails to be put in the beam.  He wasn't happy, but it was essential.  The old artificial garland that had served so well over the mantle of the old lounge chimney was a bit short for this one, so I added extensions of ivy twined around the light cables to hide them.

Our twiggy star, which makes it feel properly Christmas

Outside, I knew I would miss the old open porch and it's ideal support of the dressing of the front door. What to do here?

I knew I would be working on giving the big lilac bushes a hard renovating prune over the coming months. So I decided they wouldn't mind me stealing a few big branches early, and I jammed them into the wooden planters to create a woodland fairy-realm style natural porch, which was quite strong enough to support the lights on their wires.  Fortunately (!) there are plenty of gaps around the door (even with draught excluder stuck on) through which I was able to feed the power cable...

A bit dainty perhaps, but it did the job.

Our Woodland Fairy style Christmas porch

Joy of joys! To be able to use holly and cypress from our own garden to make a wreath for the door!  I'll admit, I was far more excited about this than a grown woman should be.  It just underlines what I've suspected all along - I evidently haven't grown up yet - that explains why I haven't decided what I will be when I do...

I was very happy with my homemade homegrown wreath! I made me smile every time I went through the door  even if anyone trying to use the door knocker got a nasty stab in the hand

I cooked Christmas dinner myself for the first ever time.  No photos of that - I was so exhausted I doubt I could have held the camera steady... But it tasted fine! I didn't poison anyone!

Still wobbly from my Christmas cooking exertions, we headed north to Sheffield on Boxing Day, in time for my sister's birthday celebrations.  It turns out we were very lucky with the weather on our journey - dry, cloudy, but no traffic issues.

Two hours after we arrived safely, it did this:

...and the city ground to a painful halt.  My sister and her family left early from mum and dad's to try to get home across the other side of town.

Three hours later, at 11.50pm, they arrived back with us, having only managed to get a mile along the first dual carriageway.  They made the sensible decision to turn around at the first roundabout instead of going on and risking a cold night stranded in the car (as it turns out many people did that night).  But we did have fun squeezing 10 people to sleep in a 2 bedroom bungalow that can sleep 6 at a push...! Fortunately the Boy Scout Engineer never allows us to leave home without a duvet and blankets in the back of the van, and the sofa bed in the lounge has an extra 'topper' which we were able to put down on the floor and the children slept on that, just like camping... We kept the heating on through the night so that we wouldn't feel the thinner blankets and the floor.

Even the next day it still took them hours to get home - many of the roads couldn't be cleared by the snow ploughs as the abandoned cars were blocking them.

But one person at least was really happy:

Snowman 1 - in the front garden

Snowman 2 - in the back garden

Hilarious really.  I had had to put to bed a sobbing (overtired and overexcited) small boy on Christmas Eve because it wasn't snowing.  I had had to explain to him that snow at Christmas was actually not that common.  Just because there was always snow on Christmas cards, and in films, didn't mean that here where we lived it was normal... We are more likely to have snow in February than December.  Just because by some fluke of nature 4 out of the 6 Christmasses he can actually remember did have snow - didn't help me in this mission.

Then we drive to Sheffield and it does this!  What can a mummy do?

Bracing snowy walk in Sheffield - amazing how quiet it is without the background noise of the traffic

Diary catch up #7: Inspirational end of autumn visit to Knoll Gardens in Dorset

At the tail end of November, my parents came down to visit for a week, and mum loves a good garden visit especially if it can be enjoyed at leisure (ie without the encumbrance of a grumbling spouse who is only in it for the coffee and cake at the end...), so we often take advantage, leave dad with the children and 'do a garden' just us two.

Now, despite our  part of the world being well endowed with fabulous gardens to visit - you practically stumble over one around every corner here in Somerset alone, never mind the offerings within an hour's striking distance into Devon, Dorset and Wiltshire - however, options with appeal in the tatty end of November are fewer!  Many are closed in the 'off' season and for the ones that remain open all year round naturally the focus tends to be on the Landscape Garden area or the Woodland Walks, etc.  All of which the Engineer and I still enjoy and are ideal for marching the children around when they need to have an enforced change from the telly and the dreaded computer.

But mum's poor hip joints are not really up to a route march, and her interests tend more towards the ornamental garden scale.  She prefers lovely borders and shrubs, and a more domestic viewpoint.  But these are the very parts of the grand gardens which look much like our own gardens look in November - half dead, brown, limp and decidedly dormant!

However, I had seen in a magazine an article about Knoll Gardens near Wimborne in Dorset, which was a little further afield than our normal forays (I thought about an hour and a half, but actually it took us 2 hours to drive there), but is generally in mum and dad's former stomping ground (they spent many years in Dorset when dad was based in Poole as a Royal Marine).  More to the point, the garden focusses on the many ways to use grasses of all types and aims to be as year-round attractive as is possible - the grasses still standing and looking stunning while 'dead and dying' and only being cut back in February - and as I was quite interested in investigating using more grasses when the circle bed is eventually 're-done' I was keen to have a look at the display at this 'bad' time of year.  After all, if it can still look attractive at the end of November, then that would certainly sell the idea of grass-focussed planting to me.

Of course I took hundreds of photos - mainly for my own information to help me remember what certain plants were, and how they looked when they are 'dead'!

These are just a taster of the feel of the display gardens, the bits I particularly liked or felt appropriate to my own circumstances here at Windy Acre.  Different sections of the garden are planted up to demonstrate the various habitats and soil conditions and which species of grasses were best suited to those conditions. It's all about 'right plant, right place'.  But for me, another valuable aspect was the introduction throughout the garden of grasses with established shrubs, not just the perennial companions we often see them placed with in delicious designer gardens.  Windy Acre has a lot of established shrubs, so this was really illuminating for me to see different ways to approach plant groupings.

This photo I took especially for the Engineer - it's a family joke now, but we all know he appreciates a log pile in any location and scenario.  Even Leo suggests stopping the car occasionally on long journeys when he has spied a wood yard or log pile 'so that daddy can go and have a look  at it'...

But for me too - I do love a shrub with berries! I assumed this one was some sort of cotoneaster, but there was no label on it.

I was very intrigued by this grouping of spindle tree, abelia and grass clumps - I would never have put the shapes together but they worked really well

One of my favourite areas - a row of what must have once been specimen hollies, simply underplanted the full length of the holly 'hedge' with stipa arundinacea like a swathe of bronzey green, contrasting amazingly with the more rigid and sculptural feel of the hollies.

This pond garden area took our breath away - everything looked fantastic, even after the miserable lashing wet weather of the last few weeks.

I loved the mixture here in this extremely shady spot of the ferny conifer draping itself through the hypericum branches. These are just the sorts of things I need to fill the gaps in the woodland border

Grasses as ground cover under dense shrub canopies like this rhododendron...I liked how the grass clumps made a sort of rhythm in the planting - the same without being 'samey'...they don't merge into one another as my assortment of 'green shrubs' do, instead they punctuate the space.

Couldn't resist the colours of this Cotinus alongside the Hakonechloa - I think that's another abelia in the background, they were everywhere at Knoll.  

This central area was planting with a more 'traditional' prairie mixture of grasses and perennials, but as you can see, with the advantage of the borrowed background of the establish shrubs and trees in the rest of the garden it gives it quite a different feel, I think, to the classic Piet Oudolf type of planting.  I felt this was a much more do-able naturalistic style, more easily translatable to the domestic garden.  We do not live in a public park with acres of flattish open ground - we live in a more intimate space.

Another idea to take away - epimediums were used as ground cover everywhere at Knoll, revealing them to be very flexible candidates.  I used an epimedium as ground cover in my little shady front garden at the old house, but I had never realised how well their form associated with grasses until I saw them here.

The information board for this area was also very inspiring when I considered the issues I have at Windy Acre.  Any homemade compost I can produce - no matter how large the quantity - is dedicated first and foremost to the annual top up of the veg patch beds, whether they be vegetable, fruit or cutting beds, as I operate this area by the no dig system, so the 2 inches or so of compost mulch is sacrosanct.  Any leafmould I produce is allocated to the woodland areas, which basically constitute most of the south and west sides of the garden, and of course there is never enough anyway! I don't want to have to buy in an annual mulch for the circle bed.  At Knoll they chop down everything in February, and simply chop it up as they go, into shorter lengths just as you would if you were adding the material to the compost heap...except here they chop it and place it straight on the ground around the plants, to mulch them in situ.  Now doesn't that sound like an ideal solution for my circle bed?

I took this photo to remind myself of the growth habit of the phlomis - it looks great here 'dead' with the funny little pom pom flowerheads silhouetted against the paler golds of the grasses.  But I have only seen it before in pictures of it's summer clothes, which mainly focus on the upper stem and the flowers - I didn't realised what a ground hugging habit of foliage it has, with the flower stems rising clear of the low mat of leaves.  What another fab ground cover/weed suppressing plant!

Bergenias with grasses - gorgeous. And just my sort of bench.

The same view from right up by the bench, with the ground cover behind being a geranium carpeting beneath the skeleton of a delightfully arching shrub

I forget how lovely yellow berries can look too - when I'm busy getting carried away with the glories of red and orange hips and berries.  But Knoll is truly a golden place, and this photo captured that for me.

I am determined to return to visit again in the other seasons - I would love to observe how the grasses look within the wider garden setting for example in early spring when they've just been cut back and are just beginning to regrow, and of course also in summer.

Diary catch up #6: November at Windy Acre brings glowing colours but Potting Shed Disaster!

I returned from Cornwall to savour the delights of autumn progressing quickly in my own garden.

The leaves of the copper beech were nearly all off.   Right! I thought, let's get the big mower out and start the grand old tidy up.  The Plan - two birds with one stone - the last trim of the year on the lawn, nicely mixed up with the chopped up leaves, into the leaf bins and voila!

Oh dear.  The engineer brought the ride on mower round into the garden...and then quickly turned it off.  A brief inspection later resulted in a Total Ban on using the mower. Argghhhhhhh....Apparently it had 'felt odd': the cause being the fact that there is only one bolt left holding the engine to the mower...Grandma's legendary maintenance regime strikes again.  The engineer felt that it could be dangerous and possibly disastrous to drive it round the garden picking up the leaves, the only course of action would be to book it in for an early service and check over and then to bed for the winter.

Great!

That left me looking at most of November hand raking the mountainous quantity of leaves shed by our lovely (but numerous) mature trees...Good for the soul, maybe, but definitely no fun for the back.

Fallen beech leaves - beautiful.  Until I realised I was going to have to collect them all by hand!

So through the weeks as I paced myself carefully gathering the falling leaves, I tried to take pleasure in the small beauties of autumn, to keep myself going and not have a major toddler tantrum....

Last lingering bloom on the yellow rose.  Gaura still looking fab in the background

The fuchsia is just getting into it's stride 

Last Gertrude Jekyll of the season, brought inside to be enjoyed.  But the chickens are showing no signs of lightening their offerings

But then - tragedy struck!

I opened the kitchen blind one Thursday morning ready to make breakfast for the masses before school, to be greeted by the following sight:

 ...a collapse of fairly extensive proportions in the side wall of my precious escape, my bolt-hole, my potting shed! And to add insult to injury, the stone had all landed on top of the loveliest rosy in the garden - the pretty pretty creamy cluster flowered shrub/rambler Malvern Hills.

Panic and gloom descended.

Will it carry on collapsing? Will my potting shed have to be evacuated and completely rebuilt? Not the best time of year to contemplate that - and the Engineer is less than confident in his stone work skills (so it would get put repeatedly to the bottom of the priority list, which is long enough already).

I will have to cut the rose right down to the ground, and hope it survives the experience.  Meanwhile I took lots of hardwood cuttings and hedged my bets for success - half in the veg patch in classic technique, half in pots to be left outside but round the sheltered side of the greenhouse.

I cleared the stones away from the rose as best as I could, sorting them roughly in to sized piles in optimism that at some point they would be need for the rebuilding.  The wall seems stable still (although dry stone construction, it is still 2 foot thick, and the inner skin seems to be ok for now.  The roof looks ok too, although I think a wise course of action may be to take the whole roof of, repair the rotting rafters and front porch supports, and rebuild the wall pointing it in properly in the better weather of spring and summer next year.  As long as it keeps standing for the winter.

But why has this happened?  It has stood for 40 years without a problem.  Was the felling of the big Monterey Cypress too much for it - perhaps the crash started to dislodge a few stones and it has just taken a few months to show it.

What is certain is that normal outdoor garden work is becoming patchier as the winter advances upon us. The 'season' is over.  Time to start hunkering down inside, with occasions forays out when its not too nasty.

Windy Acre Bonfire Night fun

Boy and Cat enjoying the best spot in the house

While outside, the harsh beauty of the frosty sunrise casts a less forgiving light on the as yet un-renovated facades of the cottage.  It looks careworn and battered, waiting for it's turn to have the Cinderella magic...

Just in time - the ground is frozen and asleep, but the ladies are safely tucked up inside their new winter home

Solar Eclipse fun

Excitement reached it's peak at Windy Acre this morning as the day of the Solar Eclipse dawned - worryingly with a hazy covering of cloud!

School has been gearing up for this over the last few days, with plans for the children to all observe the event by each class having it's own whiteboard outside with a large card and pinhole to project the image safely.  I found this brilliant and reassuring - there has been news that many schools in the country were instead intending to purposefully keep the children inside, as they were worried about the risks of them not doing as they were told, and looking at the sun with the naked eye.  Whilst I can appreciate their concerns and care, I still feel that this event is far too good an opportunity to miss - especially as a fitting finale to Science Week, which the school has also been really exploring in different and stimulating ways, judging by the reactions my own children have been bringing home all week.

First Contact happened shortly before we had to go to school, and the Engineer was suitably inspired enough to work from home today in order to enjoy the event himself...needless to say, before school he had already erected his Eclipse Viewing Station! However the cloud thickness was too much for our domestic viewing equipment - it was so thick that I was able to get a very sneaky quick glimpse with the naked eye (extremely naughty mummy - but the children didn't know I was doing it) and saw that first thrilling 'chunk' missing at about 8.45am.

Fortunately at 9.15 miraculously the clouds thinned - it was still quite hazy but at last enough to use our 'equipment'!!!

Professor engineer with his Solar Eclipse laboratory weapon of choice - the old pair of binoculars - which certainly gave us the largest and clearest image, without having to squint into a pinhole camera.  The mass of masking tape was the result of him trying to attach the binoculars to his camera tripod, in order to set up a hands-free system...but of course there was no successful way for us to line everything up - without looking at it with the naked eye!

Naturally, I got to use the less technical version...homemade pinhole camera made out of a cereal box...

...but it still worked really well!

Once the excitement was over, of course all his 'equipment' got dumped on the kitchen table for me to work around/tidy away.  Walking back into the room, seeing all this scattered across the table just made me think of a favourite film when I was younger - Short Circuit... "NO, no dis-assemble!!! Number 5 is ALIVE!!!"

No dis-assemble! A sorry end for the solar eclipse 

 But all good things must come to an end.  So back to the business of the day:

Eclipse over - I'm off out to carry on the rose pruning marathon.  Though perhaps I ought to change my weapon of choice?

Having 'got my eye in' over the last couple of days tackling the 'Paul's Scarlet Rambler' (well, I think that's what it is, anyway) which Grandma saw fit, in one of her moments of gardening insanity, to plant at the foot of the Magnolia "to brighten it up in the summer"...hmmm..., and also the Oldest Rose In The Garden, which I believe by a process of elimination, serious googling and general commonsense to be a Rosa 'Goldfinch', I gritted my teeth and took a slow and careful approach to pruning the climber on the archway.  A seriously prickly customer, hence the 'careful', but also quite precious to my heart.  And as it had flowered beautifully from May to November last year without hint of secateurs even having been waved near it last winter, I was a bit concerned that my attentions might possibly do more harm than good.  If in doubt, I turn to my ever reliable source of common sense advice: Helen Yemm, who told me to simply prune back all the flowered lateral shoots (eg the ones which were still showing hips, or the tattered remnants of them) back to 3-4 buds/or about 6 inches.  So that's what I did.  And nipped of a few dead tatty bits, though really there wasn't too much of that.  I did look carefully for the 'sucker-like new strong growth' which a healthy climber is supposed to produce from near it's base, and which we eager gardeners are to tie in lovingly to the support in order that it may replace an older stem which we can then gleefully remove...but I didn't find one. Horrors! Does this mean my lovely rosy pink wedding rose is not growing happily and healthily enough to want to produce one??? Must feed and nurture and generally adore it more obviously to make it feel loved and appreciated.

It was heartbreaking finally having to cut off all those fantastic hips.  Although, the birds never did seem to want to eat them, so either the winter hasn't been as bad as it seemed, or they are ridiculously spoiled by the smorgasbord of sunflower kernels, fat balls, peanuts and niger seed which I dilligently top up for them every week!

The rosy pink rose finally pruned, looking more like a bony catwalk model than her normal voluptuous self

 On this Spring Equinox day, I couldn't resist a quick picture of my spring tub just waiting to burst forth - I walk past it outside the kitchen door so many times every day - and I can't wait for those fat narcissi buds to open!

One of the half barrels planted up with rescued mixed narcissi I 'acidentally' dug up from the flower borders during last summer, along with a couple of feeble looking Primrose Bedder wallflowers and the forget-me-nots I scavenged from Hil's garden in the autumn - I had no annual forget-me-nots here a Windy Acre, can you believe that? Almost an impossibility, surely?  But no, Grandma's zero tolerance of 'weeds' had resulted very successfully in a total eradication.  So I begged for some from Hil - and hopefully from this year I will find them popping up all over the place here too, in the future.

Although the Primrose Bedder wallflowers I sowed in the veg patch seed bed germinated well, they haven't made terribly impressive looking plants.  I'm not sure what sort of a show we will get from them.  In contrast, the leftovers of the packet of Wallflower 'Vulcan' which came free with Gardens Illustrated a few years ago, germinated very patchily and I only got 3 plants to transplant in the autumn.  Fortunately I gave over the big barrel to them along with a couple of my honesty plants - which is lucky as they are now enormous, in rude health and the flower buds look extremely promising!

Wallflower 'Vulcan' looking delightfully promising

I shall round off with a couple of pictures of the ladies enjoying their afternoon constitutional in the warm sunshine, having recovered from the peculiar astronomical occurrences of this morning.  They were a bit perplexed by the dimming light, they all resorted to their late afternoon preening behaviour and huddled together inside Sandringham, although it didn't go dark enough here to send them to roost.

"Eclipse? What nonsense...Just an extra opportunity for a little late morning snooze"

 Well, I'm off to put all the cereals back into their boxes again...xxx

Diary catch up #5: Half term holidays in Cornwall

I briefly mentioned in my last post that "Operation Sandringham" was rudely interrupted even though it was running woefully behind schedule - by our Half Term trip to Cornwall.  Although it feels a bit odd writing about this autumn holiday when I haven't yet got round to writing my diary catch up about our lovely summer holiday to Wales yet, nevertheless I shall shamelessly proceed.

Following what appears to have become their tradition, the children insisted upon going in the sea as soon as we arrived.  All the way in.  Snorkel and all.  Admittedly not much actual swimming was achieved, but even so...Never mind that it was fairly chilly, fairly cloudy and almost dark when we arrived...

The first dip

One of the hightlights of this trip was enjoying a Heligan Hallowe'en - fantastic because as well as partaking of their amazingly created Spooky Quiz Trail (and who doesn't love a Quiz Trail?) which winds through the wilder gardens punctuated by these astounding artworks of Hallowe'en-ness (children today really don't know they are born - when I was small the spookiest thing I ever saw was the decidedly dubious Penny for the Guy that the local boys used to prop up hopefully outside the little local supermarket), I also got to enjoy a full day investigating the whole of Heligan again.  The last time I went it was Easter a few years ago, and so was all fading camellias and just opening rhododendrons etc.  Of course this time the productive walled gardens were in full harvesting mode and the tree and shrubs were awash with autumn colour glory.

Fortunately there is more to Heligan to appeal to the children even once the Spooky Trail was done - a lot of effort seems to be put in to provide a good spread of interest and activities during the school holidays.  This meant we were able to alternate between 'something for them' and 'something for us' throughout the day so that everyone was happier.  Although these did include the usual 'Hallowe'en Craft Activities' - pumpkin carving, making a spooky picture which charcoal, weaving a dream catcher, etc, all of which required an additional couple of pounds here and there, which adds up over the course of the day.

Evie nonchalantly working out the next quiz trail question, seemingly oblivious to the huge spider about to eat her

There was also an enormous Storyteller's Yurt, all bedecked inside with branches and fairy lights, a snuggly woodburner and rocking chair, with straw bales and cushions around the edge to sit on while the very good team of 2 storytellers did their thing, with costumes and props, lots of audience participation and really captured the children's attention with suitably themed 'Spooky Cornish Tales', which gave a shiver of excitement but didn't go too far.

Aspects of the garden were also very appealing to my children, they enjoyed the rope bridge so much that they ran round 3 times to do it again - while I sensibly waited at the other side - as it is so narrow there is an official 'one-way' route, so running up and down the steep gorge several times to do this helped to wear them out a bit in time for their picnic lunch!

Crossing the gorge - Indiana Jones style

The Engineer, as always, looks for the artistic shot.  Fortunately you can't see my white knuckles from this distance, as I clung on trying to pretend to Leo that I was quite brave really...

My favourite area will always be the walled gardens, though, and I especially like the fact that like Barrington (closer to us in Somerset) the productive gardens are worked properly to produce produce for use and sale, rather than just being an atmospheric and beautiful echo of some long lost productive past.

The Melon Yard gardeners' buildings

Lusting after the amazing coldframes AND the espalier fruit trees

Brassica and Scarecrow envy

Cabbages as a work of art, really.  But they are immaculate - hardly a nibble on them - how do they manage this???

The Engineer always prefers a 'posh garden visit' if there is the option of a reasonable yomp through some pretty woodland.  Acres of this available here, we never manage to cover it all before little legs start to groan, though.

If only things were always this harmonious!

Heligan's pumpkin harvest - almost as good as ours this year!

Of course we only spent the one day at Heligan, and the rest of the week was general bodding about on the beach, reading books and colouring in and watching awful films when the weather was less friendly.  We had nearly 3 full days of the most terrible fog, which meant that Leo's usual fave cliff top walks were a definite no-no, much to his daily disgust.  And inland walking in thick fog down narrow Cornish lanes isn't really that much fun with small-ish children, as you never can tell when a car is going to suddenly appear out of the mist, but we did enjoy one good misty inland walk without hiccups.  Oddly, the fog makes you focus more on the little details of the berries in the hedges and the strange differences that fog makes to the noises you can hear, I suppose because normally you would be focussing your attention on the more far-reaching views.

On our drive home we stopped off at Knightshayes near Tiverton - for that essential National Trust cafe lunch and stroll to break the journey!

Evie particularly enjoyed the gothic grandeur of the house interior, but I like this little spot at the back of the walled garden area:

Knightshayes

It was an ornamental walkway, which obviously has it's own microclimate as many of the plants still flowering merrily there were borderline hardy even for the mild Devon climate.  It was the heart shaped last leaves of the tree on the right which really grabbed me by the throat - I think it must be some type of redbud/Cercis canadensis or siliquastrum.  I saw one in Heligan too - the way the bright leaves look like they are floating in mid air as you approach is magical.

Sometimes I want so much to hold a picture in my mind to remember and create the feel of it at home, and this whole walkway was like that.   I wanted to photograph each metre of it to replicate! Impossible anyway - as most of the plants would NOT be suitable for frosty heavy clay old Windy Acre...but the feel and the shapes - yes please.