We went to France ….. and then we came back.
Originality has gone out of the window as I enter Day Twelve of the Great Coughing Virus. I’ve found some pictures from last year’s much more clement spring. This is a walk round and about the awakening garden, exactly a year ago.
This week’s WordPress photo challenge is ‘Awakening’. Click on any image to view full size.
The WordPress photo challenge this week is ‘Beloved’.
I don’t think the humans in my life whom I love would be happy for me to plaster their images all over the blogosphere. I have no pets, beloved or otherwise. So I’ll have to look a little further.
Here’s a little miscellany of images, beloved images:
I’ll end though with this. I wasn’t beloved of this elephant in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, who was only doing his job when I visited him ten years ago on my Indian Adventure. But I felt beloved and very special when he raised his trunk and brought it down upon my shoulder – his very distinctive way of blessing me.
Click on any image to see a slideshow of the photos, full-size.
On New Year’s Day, I excitedly posted a photo of the earliest snowdrops of the year, spotted that very morning. If I’d known that this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge was to be ‘Growth’, I might just have held back.
As it is, I now realise just how special those early hardy little shoots are. That little patch of snowdrops I showed you was alone, quite alone on a sea of bare earth, creeping ivy and a few shriveled Autumn leaves.
Let’s fast forward maybe four weeks. This is what the garden and surrounding woodlands will look like after all the hundreds and thousands of local snowdrops have grown, pushing themselves forth through the chilly frozen earth. Our annual miracle.
February 2017. All the local snowdrops have arrived.
Click on any image to view full size.
The weekly photo challenge posed by WordPress is taking a week off. I don’t have to. I thought I’d add to the piles of photos clogging up the internet showing snow. Snow in the garden, out by the lake, up a mountain, shutting down the motorways, whitening city streets ….
We woke up this morning to bitter cold. Minus One Celsius. This will make my American and Canadian readers laugh. Look at this post from my blogging friend Kerry. Where she wakes up it’s -32, and steam is rising from the frozen lake. She’d better not read this. Where she is, nobody ventures out, not even – especially not even – the cats.
This is snowy weather British style. Just a couple of inches. Just enough to snarl up the transport system and fill the airwaves with ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ type warnings. It’ll probably be gone tomorrow.
Click on any image to view full size.
PS. Happy New Year!
… but it ought to be. Both are – or were – spa towns. Both attracted a better class of visitor keen to cure ailments by drinking and bathing in the health-giving waters. In my opinion, Harrogate should have won hands down in attracting visitor numbers. Its sulphurous waters, reminiscent of bad eggs, are truly horrible, and must therefore do you good. The waters of Baden-Baden are without taste, though hot. No pain, no gain.
Baden-Baden welcomed visitors to this splendid railway station, now a concert hall.
Harrogate station is nothing to write home about.
Harrogate has the Pump Rooms and the Turkish Baths. Baden-Baden’s two thermal baths are extensively elegant affairs. After taking the cure, Harrogate can offer the Promenade in the Valley Gardens, while visitors to the German city can enjoy their promenade at the Trinkhalle.
Finally, Harrogate is girdled by magnificent green belt of the Stray. Baden-Baden’s visitors have instead the equally delightful Lichtentaler Aller.
We had a mere four hours in Baden-Baden today. It deserved longer. But it’s Strasbourg tomorrow, and the European Parliament. We can’t wait.
I was at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal. And it was raining. I stood beneath the shelter of the Temple of Piety, and enjoyed the gracious structured elegance of the Water Gardens. Centre stage was Neptune, Roman god of the waters, and of the Moon Ponds over which he presides.
And then I noticed that amid this ordered beauty, a coot family had built a ramshackle and highly unstructured nest. I think the gardens’ creators, John and William Aislabie would have enjoyed the water birds’ cheeky appropriation of this most peaceful of scenes.
My contribution to this week’s WordPress photo challenge: Structure.
See this tree? I look at it every day, from the study window. As trees go, it’s not so special to look at. But for two months in summer it gives satisfaction to three households, by providing them with mulberries, day after day after day.
Although they grow on trees, mulberries are a bit like loganberries, or a cross between raspberries and blackberries. They’re tart, yet sweet, and very moreish indeed. I can’t pass the tree without scavenging on the lawn for a handful to eat.
I collect a dishful every morning to put on my cereal. We add them to summer pudding, to yoghurt, to ice cream. We bake with them. We make syrups, cordials and mulberry gin with them. And the tree goes on and on, producing more and more fruits, every day from July to September.
The birds ignore them. We don’t. Such a satisfying job, collecting our daily ration of free fruit.
Here’s a recipe I tried out this week. It’s adapted from one of Nigel Slater’s reliably tasty offerings. No mulberries? Poor you. Use raspberries, tayberries, loganberries or blackberries instead. They’ll be good too.
Mulberry and apricot cake
20 cm. loose-bottomed cake tin, lined. Oven temp 180 degrees (Gas 4)
And that’s my offering for this week’s WordPress photo challenge: satisfaction
