Happy Halloween!

Wishing all my dear friends a very Happy Halloween!

The Noodle now eight months old.

Alas I have had no time for the blog of late. Family commitments have kept me from it, but The Noodle and I have visited a few gardens this year including Great Dixter (at last). I hope to post a few pics from our adventures just as soon as I have had the time to sit down and look at them myself!

Whilst I have not had the time to visit blogs and forums over the past few months I have not forgotten you all and think about you often,

much love,

RO xxx

Wordless Wednesday: Summer Jazz

 Salvia horminium Claryssa

Explosive in pink!

July Fireworks - Valerian (Centranthus ruber)

Just a few quick words to wish my American friends a very 

Happy 4th of July!

Hummingbird Hawk Moth (Macroglossum stellartarum) on Valerian.

I nipped out into the garden at 7am this morning before it got too hot to snap a visitor to the garden who is rather taken with the Valerian. The first time I saw a hummingbird hawk month I thought it was a real hummingbird and was a little disapointed to find that it was a moth. However, as it is such an amazing sight to behold I am always thrilled to see it.

Hummingbird Hawk Moth on Valerian.

 Hummingbird Hawk Moth on Valerian.

Thank you for all your lovely comments about The Noodle. He is doing really well, growing oh so fast and keeping me very busy. I love every minute I spend with him even if he does like to keep me on my toes! Last week I took him for his first stroll around a garden. He absolutely loved it, giggled and cooed the whole time; so I have high hopes for him on the gardening front -OK OK I know he is only 4 1/2 months old but you have to start them early right?

 The Noodle in his chariot on our first garden visit together :o)

More to come on our first garden visit together soon...

A New Shoot.

It is about time I gave you an update really isn't it? Well that is what I have been told anyway. Lucy asked me for just one sentence. I'm not sure I have the energy for that much. If I was going to be awkward I would type just one word and leave it at that...

TIRED!

I suppose you could add a few very's at the front of it if you wanted to get closer to how I am feeling right now.

What I should tell you about is the arrival of my new shoot. He was late. Enjoying himself too much to come out I guess, but he did eventually arrive on the 24th February in the late afternoon (weighing 7lbs 2oz). The labour is not something I want to dwell on ever again. It did not go well. I don't remember the last 12 hours of it, my mind has completely blanked them from memory. All I know about it is what I have been told by my dear mother who was there throughout to hold my hand. The bit I do remember at the end though is when she quite literally slapped me into consciousness to tell me to wake up for 'skin to skin' with my little boy, Edwin.

He was rather blue and quite grumpy when he first arrived. I know exactly how he felt!

 Then he turned a worrying shade of yellow and had a good snooze.

Unfortunately we did not have the smoothest of starts and for the first two weeks of Edwin's life we moved around the hospital between maternity, the neonatal special baby care unit and the children's ward. We have however been home for just over a week now and are finally enjoying our time together and relaxing into a routine. So I am at last finding time to take pictures of tiny fingers and toes.

Tiny fingers

Tiny toes (huge feet!)

I cannot tell you how over the moon I am with my wonderful little boy. He is keeping me very busy though so I won't be blogging for a while. Love to you all, and thank you for all your friendship and support.

RO xxx

Hello from The Noodle!

Are we nearly there yet?

Well the answer is yes! I am just one week away from the arrival of my little boy. Life as I know it is about to change forever...

Ill health has sadly meant that I have not managed to maintain the blog very well over recent months. I hope that as I adjust to motherhood I will start to post again in due time, but I am afraid I will be very quiet for a while. I still have many visits from last year I have yet to share with you and hope to update you on Tumbledown as the season progresses. It is all rather grey and windy here at the moment and I am currently struggling to get my socks on let alone get outside with a camera! Roll on spring...

Thank you so much for all your lovely comments and well wishes. I will do my best to let you know when the little beastie arrives.

RO xxx

 My little squiggler back in December -he's a lot bigger now!

An Apology and Memories of a June Visit to The Garden House.

The Long Walk, The Garden House, Buckland Monachorum, Devon.

My dear friends, thank you so much for all your kind messages I have been quite touched by all your well wishes and support. I really must apologise for the distinct lack of posts over the last few months. Sadly unlike the flowers I love so much I have not "bloomed" this summer with pregnancy but succumbed to every ailment going. However I am very happy to say that I am now nearly seven months pregnant and very much looking forward to the arrival of my son in February. Unfortunately the morning sickness never went away and I am still a miserable vomiting wretch! My little munchkin on the other hand is growing strong and regular hospital visits keep me reassured that all is at least well with him, even if I feel rotten. I have felt so zapped of energy that I have struggled to keep up with my usual joys and so my blogging and photography have come to a standstill at the moment. I do not intend to keep it this way, although for the next few months I fear I will not have the zeal for it with my ever increasing bump causing havoc for me!

Stipa gigantea

I have rustled together some images from my visit to The Garden House in Devon way back in early June of this year when I merrily plodded around several Devon gardens blissfully unaware that my life was about to change forever!

 The Long Walk

 

The Garden House, a Georgian mansion built in the 1830's was the replacement for a medieval vicarage used by the vicars of the nearby village of Buckland Monachorum. In the 1940's Lionel and Katherine Fortescue bought the house and founded the garden that exists today. Lionel, a master at Eton was keen plantsman and grew a wide range of plants in the garden including many Rhododendron hybrids.

The Cottage Garden

My main interest in the garden here was not with the Fortiscues early work but with that of Keith Wiley. Keith Wiley was appointed as head gardener by Lionel in 1978. With their blessing he undertook an expansion of the garden onto six acres of adjacent land. Over a period of ten years Keith sculpted the landscape and planted it with his own unusual style known as "New Naturalism." The results were truly spectacular. Wiley has a magical way of creating earthworks densely planted with trees, shrubs and perennials which looks as if they have always existed there, even if they are in fact highly unusual combinations.

The Cottage Garden

I understand that in 2003 Keith Wiley and his wife Ros who had poured their life's work into The Garden House over a 25 year period were made to leave by the The Fortescue Garden Trust who had taken over the ownership of the garden after the death of the Fortiscues in the 1980's. Whilst there is now a new and very talented head gardener at The Garden House it is undoubtedly Keith's extensions of the garden that hold all the magic. I found his work truly inspirational and whilst I am not a trained gardener myself I will be so bold as to say that I think this man is a genius. The way he has crafted the landscape into a seemingly wild floral heaven has to be seen to be believed.

The Cottage Garden

Keith and his wife Ros have managed to buy a small plot of land just a mile away from The Garden House. He has begun work there on a new garden, The Wildside. I did of course visit The Wildside and will share my visit with you in a later post. I shall not ramble on much more about The Garden House but let you see the photos for yourself. As I have previously confessed the images are biased towards the areas created by Keith such as The Long Walk, The South African Garden, The Quarry Garden The Cottage Garden and The Wild Flower Meadow as these for me are the most exciting.

The Cottage Garden

The Cottage Garden

The Cottage Garden with view of St Andrews church, Buckland Monachorum.

The Cottage Garden

  The Cottage Garden

The Cottage Garden

The Magic Circle

The Cottage Garden

The South African Garden

The South African Garden

The Quarry Garden

The Quarry Garden

The Quarry Garden

The Quarry Garden

The Quarry Garden

The Quarry Garden

The Wild Flower Meadow

The Wild Flower Meadow

The Ovals Garden.

The Ovals Garden was an interesting area for me. It stood out in stark contrast from the wilder parts of the garden. It was designed in 1992 by Keith Wiley as a way of improving links between the different terraces in the older part of the garden. I found it quite visually intriguing and the little summer house/ hut at the top called to me to go and sit in it and look out over the garden below. What I did not like about it was the planting which consisted entirely of Ophiopogon. I puzzled for some time as to why such a dull and uninspiring plant dominated the area. It was not until I got home and read my little guide book that I found the answer. This was in fact not the original planting but a recent introduction. The garden had originally been planted with shade loving plants including a 'river' of blue Corydalis. I must confess that I would have much rather seen the river of blue Corydalis!

I really must thank Anna and VP who both urged me to find out more about Keith Wiley when I asked earlier this year which gardens I should visit. Visiting his gardens was a wonderful treat and I am delighted to have discovered such an innovative and intriguing gardener.

Remains of the tower belonging to the old medieval vicarage.

The Bottom Terrace of the old garden.