For Christmas 2020 my son gave me a razor sharp Japanese pair of secateurs, with holster….. …and – a pair of Bradleys’ leather gardening gauntlets…. Aren’t they just beautiful. That soft white leather for the hands, warmly and cosily lined, yet fitting closely enough to do quite delicate gardening jobs. Those heavy duty long arms, …
Spider season
Autumn – Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness – and spiders! Sadly, by the time I got back from the Heath Hands Spider walk this web in my garden had already been abandoned but it looks as though it might have had good use. And for those you who, if you are like me, always …
Scything the wild flowers on the Boating Pond island
After the major countrywide floods of the early and mid Noughties the Corporation of London and the surrounding boroughs got very worried that the streams that run down through the Hampstead ponds might get out of hand and flood the good people of Gospel Oak and Kentish Town. So massive flood protection works were put …
Scything the wild flowers on the Boating Pond islandRead More
Chagall windows at Tudeley
This stumpy little church buried amongst the Kent apple orchards is All Saints Tudeley – and it is the only church in the world to have had every one of its twelve windows created by the Russian artist Marc Chagall. How come? In the early 1960s the grand house nearby, Somerhill, belonged to Sir Henry …
A few random snippets
Brief sojourn in Bristol There is certainly no stopping a bramble… This one has grown up through the hollow post of a fence in Stoke Park in Bristol – where these goats are also happily roaming free and munching whatever, including the brambles, comes their way. Back in Hampstead Lane Back in the Hampstead Lane …
Jazz in the garden
I am very conscious that this blog has taken a back seat over the last many weeks in favour of our Salon Music and my own blog. So, since the party did take place in the garden at Hampstead Lane I am reproducing the post I have just added to the Salon’s blog for the …