Thursday 22 May 2008

Days Out

I have great plans for all the things I'm going to do in my two weeks off, long lists of jobs around the house and garden, neglected for months... but so far I just seem to be having days out! Stewart had the day off on Monday so we ventured up the A1 to Rutland where we visited the Barnsdale Gardens - home of Gardeners' World. I've always had a yearning for a vegetable plot but my vegetable growing is a bit haphazard - courgettes in the flower beds, runner beans up the fence, occasional tomato plant in a pot. So for my birthday last year a friend bought me a ticket for Barnsdale plus an out of print copy of Geoff Hamilton's book The Ornamental Kitchen Garden... such a lovely thoughtful gift. So finally I've got around to using the ticket! The gardens are beautiful and very inspirational - lots of flowers...


...and foliage. So we've come home inspired!

I told Stewart I was cultivating a hobby for his retirement so he won't be under my feet! This is not imminent as he's younger than me and has no plans to retire but you have to start these things early!

Yesterday I was out in London again. Having been born in London, spent part of my childhood there and now having relatively easy access to the city it's often easy to overlook the fact that it is one of the major cities of the world... and I love it! I was back to Trafalgar Square with all the tourists...




...for a study day at the National Gallery. This was a follow up to the talk on Saturday covering the topic of drapery in paintings in more depth. There were different speakers, including Alison Watt (see last post) plus another chance to look at paintings in the Gallery. An interesting and informative day which I hope will have some relevence to my degree... but if not it doesn't matter because I enjoyed my day out.



Today it's back to my long list of jobs... no. 1 on the list is to post a couple of mini quilts... more about that later!

7 comments:

  1. Your day out to Barnsdale sounds like a real treat - I love your photos.
    You're right about taking London for granted, I don't go often enough. The day in the National Gallery must have been so inspiring.

    Enjoy the rest of your 'time off'.

    Celia

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  2. Barnsdale sounds wonderful - definitley somewhere I'd like to visit one day. Your photos are gorgeous - I love flowers, but you can't beat interesting foliage, can you?

    Lovely photos of London too - is there a photography module somewhere amid your coursework? ;-)

    Have a lovely two weeks off.
    x

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  3. Barnsdale sounds wonderful and I know what you mean about London, it's so easy to get there, when my kids were small we were frequent visitors and had done all the sights before they went into secondary school. They ended up expert travellers on the tube, no problen to them.

    Mini Quilts, now that sound really interesting, looking forward to that.

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  4. It sounds like you've made a perfect start to your two weeks off! Your Barnsdale photos are lovely. I really should take Monster and Minx up to London to see the sights but I keep putting it off!

    Can't wait to see the mini-quilts :)

    xxx

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  5. I used to love watching Geoff Hamilton and was really upset when he died - how lovely to be able to visit Barnsdale!

    I think your veg growing sounds perfect by the way!

    And very interested in you postal intentions!!!

    Lucy xx

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  6. Your collages of your visit to Barnsdale look wonderful Gina! I'm sure a week made a difference to the numbers of flowers out, either that or Ididn't look properly when I was there LOL

    The mini-quilts sound interesting....

    Enjoy the rest of your break. :o)

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  7. Oh no. Yet another wonderful blog I've discovered tonight to add to my list of blogs not to be missed! I love all I've read of your posts but I thought I'd comment on this as my gardening skills are not up to much.

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