Green-fingered Eccentricity
England has the coolest bugs. Purely and simply because I can get up close and personal with them and they won’t kill me.
If you like a side of pain and death with your bugs then I think Australia wins hands down, but for warm fuzzy garden friends you can’t go past the bumble bee.
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This is more of a homage to one particular plant than a study of the garden at Harewood House. I saw this plant in a number of locations throughout the north of England and each time I was struck silent in disbelief. It’s positively Jurassic looking! It feeds my fear of Velociraptors leaping out at me spitting poison in my eye and then consuming my delicious remains.
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Crazy Car Man and I ventured from the formal Terrace at Harewood House to the slightly more informal Himalayan Garden. This garden appealed to me a lot more. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the time and effort that goes into the grooming of a garden like the Terrace, but trimming the hedges with a pair of nail scissors and a laser sight is not really my idea of a good time.
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Once upon a time, many years ago, when I was a wee lass, I adored beyond comprehension Enid Blyton’s books, particularly ‘The Magic Faraway Tree‘.
So I had a complete regression to seven years old when I saw this particular tree in the grounds of Harewood House.
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That title is starting to look like the sort of chapter heading you get in a textbook, but the next (seriously awesome) part of England I’m covering is so huge I only got to see about one sixteenth of it, and that one sixteenth will take four postings to cover.
Harewood House. It’s big. And in Australian vernacular, rilly rilly old.
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My all time garden hero is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage fame. I have refrained from mentioning him so far in the hopes that this blog doesn’t morph into the H F-W stalkery Biggest Fan Ever dribbly love-fest. But I can’t talk about the following without citing Hugh as inspiration.
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One of the many joys of travelling 25 hours in a stinky, sweaty plane is seeing my sister waiting for me at the other end. She’s lived in England now for near on eight years and I consider her more of a Londoner than anything else these days. The City suits her.
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After two weeks in England – hereby renamed the Land Of Heat and Garden Glory – I’m back and in the process of recovering from jetlag and building up my cold tolerance. I honestly thought there had been a mistake when the pilot said the ground temperature in Sydney was 6 degrees. Surely he meant 26. Or at least 16. Please can I go back to England?
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