Sunshine
The weather has been lovely all weekend - sunny, warm and with a light breeze. Soon I will be able to move into my usual summer mode of complaining about it being too hot. On Friday, I crawled home after a busy (4-day) week, to dinner with the g-d and friends which, although delightful, prolonged the tiredness into the middle of Saturday. She and the boyfriend are moving to Paris in September, so I have at least a weekend with them on the cards. I will miss her, but yay! weekends in Paris!
Yesterday was mostly wasted in sleep and long baths, apart from a short visit to the Vienna/mental illness exhibition at the Wellcome, but today I actually managed to get out of the house at a reasonable time to look at some private gardens open under the National Garden Scheme. These were in broad, quiet Georgian terraces and squares behind the Caledonian Road. I travel almost daily down that road by bus, but I'd never been behind the rather tatty surface. The area turns out to be very nice indeed - it seems to be where all the people referred to in jokes about trendy Islington lefties live. These garden visits are a great way to see into other people's houses (and gardens). Both gardens were pretty small, but had enough well-grown trees to make them feel a lot bigger; one had fragrant old roses and home-made cake, while the other had a pond, a very covetable myrtle tree, and bees, but no honey for sale, alas. I bought a pot-plant at the first garden, then trailed about the long terraces trying to find the third open garden in the area, a tiny wood owned by the council. I couldn't track it down, but ended up following the grim walls of Pentonville Prison back to Caledonian Road, where lo! there was a nice little garden centre, which sold me some cosmos and a trailing geranium for my window box.
I didn't like to take too many pictures, since these were private gardens, but here are some of flowers.
This is a very fragrant moss rose called "Chapeau de Napoleon", because the buds allegedly look like his hat (his fuzzy green one, presumably).
A rather pretty cistus; I'm strangely taken by these, maybe because I don't seem to be able to grow them.
This is the view from the end of one garden - it always surprises me how secluded some of these little London back gardens can be.
Yesterday was mostly wasted in sleep and long baths, apart from a short visit to the Vienna/mental illness exhibition at the Wellcome, but today I actually managed to get out of the house at a reasonable time to look at some private gardens open under the National Garden Scheme. These were in broad, quiet Georgian terraces and squares behind the Caledonian Road. I travel almost daily down that road by bus, but I'd never been behind the rather tatty surface. The area turns out to be very nice indeed - it seems to be where all the people referred to in jokes about trendy Islington lefties live. These garden visits are a great way to see into other people's houses (and gardens). Both gardens were pretty small, but had enough well-grown trees to make them feel a lot bigger; one had fragrant old roses and home-made cake, while the other had a pond, a very covetable myrtle tree, and bees, but no honey for sale, alas. I bought a pot-plant at the first garden, then trailed about the long terraces trying to find the third open garden in the area, a tiny wood owned by the council. I couldn't track it down, but ended up following the grim walls of Pentonville Prison back to Caledonian Road, where lo! there was a nice little garden centre, which sold me some cosmos and a trailing geranium for my window box.
I didn't like to take too many pictures, since these were private gardens, but here are some of flowers.
This is a very fragrant moss rose called "Chapeau de Napoleon", because the buds allegedly look like his hat (his fuzzy green one, presumably).
A rather pretty cistus; I'm strangely taken by these, maybe because I don't seem to be able to grow them.
This is the view from the end of one garden - it always surprises me how secluded some of these little London back gardens can be.