This week has been a veritable flurry of activity and adventure. First of all I took myself off on a solo adventure to Lyme Park, after spotted it on a road sign last week and realising it wasn't actually as far away as I thought. Only a small part of the house is open, so it only took about twenty minutes to walk through, and I spent most of my time out in the gardens, and wandering about through the grounds. I confess I can never quite enjoy these places as much as some people can - my mind always goes to the unfathomable levels of wealth it would have taken to build (and where that wealth came from), the sheer number of people who would have been servants (or worse), and the general inequality that lets some people live like this and others very much not. I did spend most of the day there though, wandering around the herbaceous borders and up through the woodland. Yesterday I had a very different type of day out - an impromptu visit to my sister. We'd booked both a 10k race and a half marathon this year, and of course both were postponed, and later cancelled, and we missed the opportunity to ramble about the countryside for a few hours putting the world to rights. Then it dawned on us - why not do that without a race? We walked out to Hilbre Island, and it was more seaside than countryside, but it did the trick, and the sun even came out eventually, and our mum met us for lunch in a little cafe by the beach. I don't get to see the sea very often so this was just the thing I needed. Today has been different again - a friend and I went to the gardens at Chatsworth. I didn't think I'd been before, but it turns out I have, probably about 17 years ago. We were more interested in the kitchen gardens, and cottage gardens, so we headed there first, and weren't disappointed. What a huge number of gardeners it must take to keep this lot in check! I can barely keep up with my tiny veg patch. I confess I was secretly pleased to see their kale had caterpillars too.... I definitely had shed envy on the way round. I was interested to see they were growing ginger, which I'd always thought needed more heat. I think it was quite sheltered there, but it gave me hope for starting my own ginger experiment in the future. We both came back with plenty of ideas for our own gardens (some of which might even be implemented). The rest of the gardens weren't quite so interesting (to us, anyway), but we did manage to lose nearly four hours in there, as there was plenty to look at. Again, the sheer unfathomable wealth to be able to pay someone to design your garden to fit with the landscape - and to be able to shape the landscape because you own that too was quite mind-bending. There were a few other ideas we came away with - less on the scale of a massive fountain, and more like making a fence from old branches. We brought ourselves back down to earth with a cuppa at Cauldwell's Mill on the way home. It started to rain while we were in the cafe, and hasn't really stopped since, so I think we timed our visit pretty well.
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Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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February 2024
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