A Week In The Middle Of Nowhere

We're just back from a week in a lovely cottage small holding in the Cardigan Bay area of Wales with my dad, and my sister and her better half. The cottage, very kindly lent to us for a week by some friends of my dad, is pretty much in the middle of nowhere with very few other houses around and, even better still, no mobile signal. The Internet was also pretty patchy (as in it only seemed to work at about 6 in the morning), but that was a good thing for the most part. A week of enforced digital detox was pretty damn good! Days spent reading actual paper books and doing a bit of wood gathering, and nights spent either barbecuing and sitting around a bonfire, or gathering together to eat on the picnic benches outside the kitchen. I could really get used to living like that...

NGS Garden Visit - Washington Old Hall

What better to do with another fine weekend but partake in a spot of garden visiting? Even better is a garden that is free to enter, but had a NGS plant stall, and a very reasonably priced tea shop with a fabulous selection of cake. Just the job. The Intrepid baby, my sister, and I felt it was too good to resist.

Secret Gardens

I was recently given a load of garden books that had belonged to my mum. There are several interesting ones there that I'll review as I get through them, but the most eye-catching one for me was a book on the creation of private spaces within the garden called Secret Gardens that looks like it was published by an Australian magazine. How it found its way into my mum's collection I have no idea. I assume it was a charity shop find...

Anyhoo, reading through this book really got me thinking about things I'd love to do, but there is a limit to the amount I can or am prepared to do to my current space. As I've mentioned before, the house is rented and given how reluctant the landlord seems to be to spend money on it, I'm loathed to put too much into the garden.