Green-fingered Eccentricity
Crazy Car Man and I had a wee whirlwind tour of Merry ole Tingland this weekend just gone. It was lovely weather, sunny with just a hint of cloud, a little sun shower followed by a rainbow, and a frisky little breeze. Without a doubt shorts and t-shirt weather.
Sounds pretty much like a February weekend in England, right?
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2010 was an absolute corker of a year. This garden malarkey sunk it’s teeth in with a vengeance and quite suddenly I was looking at the world with new eyes. I fell off a motorbike and got married in a Lahu hilltribe ceremony, I fell off a step and discovered Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, I got a new job and found a new career. And I grew loads of plants, battled snails and weeds, contended with Mother Nature’s temper tantrums, experimented madly, got things badly wrong and occasionally got them right.
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I have a penchant for the weird looking (excepting Crazy Car Man who is exceptionally good looking – successful back pedal there) so it’s no wonder I fell in love with this thistle on first sight.
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Thoughts of the north of England don’t usually gel cohesively with images of a steamy, humid tropical wonderland. Though with the way global warming has been affecting English seasons maybe it won’t be too long until liana vines are swinging from the wings of the Angel of the North.
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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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