Bluebells and various

 

I think I got some work done this weekend.  I forget.  I've been outdoors a lot.  Fresh air and sunlight are dangerous to the middle-aged.  It gives them ideas above their mature responsible (creaky) station.  I was thinking as I plonked another rose* into Third House's garden yesterday that there are actually beginning to be stretches of that garden that feel like mine.  Chiefly the ones that have lots of roses in them, but it's a start.  This is the problem with taking over someone else's garden:  figuring out what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of, and how to make someone else's old bits and your new bits Work Together in a Harmonious Whole.  I don't do harmonious wholes too well.**

            Georgiana rang up this morning from the wilds of Sussex and said that she was getting out of her seminar early and would we like to go to a garden somewhere this afternoon?  And we decided to go look at bluebells.  Which meant the hellhounds and I had to go out and find some suitable for Peter's limited ambulatory range.   We came home with a short list which Peter promptly trumped by declaring which wood he wanted to look at.  So we went there. 

Also there are lambs

 

AWWWWWWWW

Also very good sky

In fact, never mind the lambs. Look at that sky.

This is what I think of when I think of 'the bluebell wood'. But it runs a little later than some of the others, and isn't quite out yet.

But . . . coming.

This is where we all went this afternoon. Bluebells, by George. Or possibly William. Or Elizabeth. Or Kate. Bluebells, by Kate.

This is so doorway-to-fairyland to me. Especially when there's a really clear demarcation, as here. One step you're in the mundane world, next step . . .

The local wizard, commanding a miracle.

The wizard's tree. Now, I ask you, isn't it clearly the sentinel to fairybluebellland?

Georgiana captures the local wizard and the hellgoddess with her hellhounds

* * *  

* Comtesse du Cayla http://www.classicroses.co.uk/products/roses/comtesse-du-cayla/ but she's a better colour than this.  Beales calls her red-orange which is nonsense:  she's copper-pink.^  She's also been in a pot for the last two years and the pot decided to burst.  Thanks, pot.  It was even plastic—the only excuse for plastic pots over terra cotta is that they don't burst.^^   But when this one burst, after I finished dancing around and howling, I thought, oh, what the hell, let's put her in the ground just for laughs. 

^ I have both of the roses at the bottom of her page too.+  Just by the way.  

+ Euphrates is a major ratbag, but that's another story.  What I want to know is how they get from a nice little China rose like the Comtesse to recommending the possessed-by-demons 'species' Euphrates?  I notice that even Peter Beales, champion of all things perverse in the queendom of roses, doesn't quite stretch to selling Tigris or Nigel Hawthorne which are Euphrates' siblings.  When I decided not to ruin my nice friendly laid back easy going nature# by growing Tigris and Nigel again I didn't realise I wasn't going to have the chance.  Rats.  I like a stupid challenge, especially when it's a rose.## 

# Roses are dangerous

 ## Tipsy Imperial Concubine seems to have come out of her winter in the greensummerhouse happy and jolly and ready for business.  We'll see.  She does seem to be another of these frellers whose flowers are UTTERLY SPOILT BY RAIN.  Gah.  At least there's a lot less of her than there is Souvenir de la Malmaison, who was trying to poke me in the eye this afternoon at the cottage. 

^^ Okay, they're cheaper, they also weigh a lot less and don't need as much watering.  But if it weren't for terra cotta's propensity for dissolving into tiny splintery shards as soon as it gets cold—and don't talk to me about pot feet:  pot feet are another of those royal-pain-in-the-butt myths foisted on a gullible gardening public—I would never use plastic. 

** Ask anyone who rings bells with me.  Assuming there's Monday night practise tomorrow as usual I will have rung five days in a row.   Ahem.  This is, of course, nothing compared to Niall, who will ring eight or nine times in seven days if Penelope doesn't hide his car keys and/or lock him in a cupboard.  Thursday was handbells, Friday was sacred home tower bell practise, this morning was service ring . . . and I went to a Special Seminar on Grandsire Triples last night which was . . . ahem.  Well, time on a rope is always a good thing, it was a tower I didn't know, the bells were nice and the people were friendly and . . . did I say ahem?  Ahem.  But they're going to do it again next month and I'm going again.  We can only get better.  I hope we can only get better.  And while I was sitting out waiting my next disastrous turn pretending to ring Grandsire Triples inside I knitted an ENTIRE hellhound square.  To the considerable amusement of several of the assembled.  At least one Madame Defarge joke was heard.  Knitting is perfect for sitting out—what is everyone else's problem?  AHEM.  One of the minders—minders didn't have the option of sitting out—told me that she'd just bought HOW TO KNIT YOUR OWN ROYAL WEDDING but she wasn't going to start till after, of course, because she wanted to see what everyone was wearing.  Which, if you are going to knit your own royal wedding, seems to me very sensible.  I fear I belong rather more to the leave the country now camp, like Georgiana's horticultural society, who've organised a tour of Belgian gardens for that weekend.