Tag Archives: garden

Bodnant

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Having said that the weather on the Friday was awful, it was in parts. Fortunately we had decided to head to the north coast, and ended up at Bodnant Gardens – the weather had cleared up as we passed (we were originally headed for Penryn Castle because some of it was indoors) so we decided to go in. And what a good decision that was – one of the best gardens I’ve been to. Thoroughly recommended.
It’s made up of several levels. At the top, there’s a fairly traditional formal flower garden

With more butterflies!
Below that, there’s a rose garden, then there’s this lily pond

And below that, there’s *another* lily pond


And then below all that, there’s a path through the woods, with a stream.
And a particularly photogenic waterfall.

Welsh Wales

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We’ve been spending a few days in Welsh Wales – the weather has been pretty good, but it’s been damn cold. It’s bloody May – it shouldn’t be this flamin’ cold!
First up was Manorbier in Pembrokeshire. We’ve heard how lovely it is – it wasn’t. Might have been something to do with the Arctic gale blowing, but we didn’t hang around for very long. There’s a surprisingly pristine castle, but it’s not National Trust so we were buggered if we were going to pay to get in…

After that, we went to Colby Woodland Garden, which *is* National Trust. Quite nice, with a reasonable walled garden, but nothing desperately exciting.
When we were in Wales in September, SWMBO was trying to find a beach on the Cardigan Bay coast that she visited as a child. We’ve been to about half a dozen of the damn things now, and we still haven’t found it. I suspect that the passage of 30 years has merged bits of several different beaches into is a mythical place that only exists in her memory/imagination.
Today we tried the wonderfully named Mwnt. Nope, that wasn’t the one either. Nice though – probably really nice when it’s warm. Which it wasn’t. National Trust car-park though, so we parked for free! Cheap? Us?

Finally, we went back to Llanerchaeron, near Aberaeron (see post from last September). Yes, it’s National Trust…
The vegetable plots in the walled garden are just starting to get going – blossom on the fruit trees, potato plants just starting to come up, that sort of thing.
I quite like this shot of one of their espaliered apple trees – shot from very low down with the very wide-angle lens.
We went back to see the pigs as well, and they’re much too big to lay in the food trough now.
Are there left-handed and right-handed pigs, based on which way their tails curl?

Pickles

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Once the chutneyfest had been completed, we moved on to pickled onions. In the end, our garage smelled very slightly of vinegar – I wonder why that might be?

We did two batches of onions – one used bog-standard Sarsons pickling vinegar, the second used vinegar “enhanced” by us. My brother is the first to have tried some of these, and reported that while his sinuses were perfectly clear, he appeared to be missing the top of his head. Got them about right then!

Tomatoes

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We cleared down the last of our tomatoes at the weekend, to get them in before any frosts. A lot were still green, but realistically there’s no chance that they will ripen now. We picked the small matter of 28lbs of the things!

This is what 28lbs of tomatoes looks like
SWMBO has made a tomato sauce out of the ripe ones, but the rest are going into chutney – and that many tomatoes need a lot of vinegar, apples, onions and sugar!
The brother has suggested that this beast, 1lb in weight, should be made into an individual batch of chutney – much like a single-cask whisky…

A 1lb tomato

Llanerchaeron

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The final stop on our Welsh trip was to Llanerchaeron, near Aberaeron – a John Nash house with an enormous pair of walled gardens. These were full of more fruit and vegetable plants than you could imagine.

 

Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equivalent, 1/500 @ f3.5, ISO 100

There is also a working farm, with some particularly inquisitive pigs!

 

Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equivalent, 1/500 @ f3.5, ISO 100

Some of the plants in the walled garden were covered with more bees than I’ve ever seen – I assume they’ve got a hive or two somewhere. There were also plenty of butterflies – I seem to have hardly seen any since I was a child (and that’s going back some way now…). I was surprised by just how close I could get to it with the macro turned on on the compact camera.
 

 

Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equivalent, 1/500 @ f3.5, ISO 100

Having mentioned on a previous post about the fogged infra-red film at Dyrham Park and Croombe Park, I was extra careful with the film I shot in Wales. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the film counter reached 38 that I realised the damn film hadn’t been winding on. Gnaargh! Mutter, damn, blast…
So, not a successful summer on the infra-red front.

The garden (again)

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Another one from the garden at home, with a bee collecting pollen from, well I don’t know, some plant or other. I can identify a rose, a lily and a tulip and that’s about it. We had loads of bees in the garden this year (I won’t use the term “summer” as we didn’t really have one), really good to see.

Nikon D200, Cosina 100mm macro lens, 1/160 @ f6.7, ISO 100

 

The garden

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These were actually taken on the same day as the previous ones, later in the afternoon.

This is a courgette flower, in the evening sunlight at the front of the house.

Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equiv, 1/500 @ f4, ISO 100

 

One of our lilys – I think the water droplets come from watering rather than rain.

Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equiv, 1/200 @ f2.8, ISO 100

 


This one is much less arty than the others, but does show just how many vegetables we* were growing! The plants in the blue Ikea bags are green beans, runner beans, peas, mange-tout and petit-pois, while the stuff in the black buckets at the front are potatoes. The metal cages you can make out at the back are supporting the tomatoes. Some of the tomatoes are still going, 6ft tall and with massive fruit. We’ve already made two batches of green tomato chutney (one of them a huge batch) as well as tomato sauce and tomato soup.
* That’s the royal “we” of course. My job in the garden is to cut the lawn and lug bags of compost around.

Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equiv, 1/60 @ f4, ISO 100