Taking a Bluebell Break...

Dear blog readers,

Sometimes, when the rain finally holds back for a brief moment, 

the clouds part long enough for the sun to caress our skin and souls for a few precious minutes...

... we ought to find our own little bluebell spot and allow ourselves to sit down, 

breathe slowly and gather our thoughts...

With a feverish little fellow at home from school today, my planned morning walk had to be abandoned and I found myself rushing around doing laundry with one hand and lunch preparations with the other...

... whilst also making a few fish-shaped biscuits to cheer up the little man...

But then I saw them.

And I heard them.

Those seductive, cajoling rays that chanted 'come out, come out, enjoy us while we last'...

So I did.

A few moments of time out in the garden.

In the very wild garden in bad need of a haircut, a shave and a general face lift...

I hope this weekend you find your own bluebell spot and the time to enjoy it!

All the best,

Helena

Ps. Thank you so much for all your kind comments. I appreciate every word.

Feeling flowery...

 Dear readers,

Not much new to report from the Swenglish abode. The temptation of summer that was offered to us just over a week ago, has been exchanged for a much colder, rainier shade of grey. So, what to do to push away the clouds in sky and mind? Flower picking, of course! Inside, I become seven again, remembering how I used to walk to my grandparents, picking flowers for my grandmother on the way.

So I pick. Whites and blues and any perky petal that smiles a little extra at me as I walk past. Instant colour therapy. Did you hear that, oh great grey clouds in the sky, you have not defeated me yet! 'Flower power' will go a long way...!

Wishing you all a lovely mid-May week, and may your days be lined with petals.

Helena

Roma, per favore...!

Today, I am sitting by the pond in the garden, listening to silence. Well, I can, of course, hear the birds tweeting their joyous spring hymns, the faint sound of a lawn-mower in the distance, and every now and then a bee buzzing by my head, inebriated by a greedy dose of nectar...

Yesterday, however, was a very different story. It was the story of crowds, chaos and cream. Cream as in ICE cream. And, at times, as in I Scream. The former as in the staggeringly delicious Italian gelato, the latter because of the insufferable number of people in the Vatican museum, making it very hard to have that special tête-à-tête with Michelangelo that one had envisioned...

I confess, I am in love with the amazing, beautiful, interesting, overwhelming, hot, busy and more than a little chaotic city that is Rome. The mother of all capitals, the queen of ancient marvels. The majestic churches, the lively markets, the wooden shutters on the old houses lining the cobbled, narrow little streets...I could go on and on... I first visited Rome around twenty years ago, and I did actually not fall in love then.

But this time.

Oh my.

Perhaps it had something to do with watching my sons enjoy it so much, being blown away by the ruins at Forum, the pasta that made all other pasta pale in comparison and simply the feel of this jewel of Italian culture.

The Villa Borghese park is a wonderful breathing hole in the busy city, and perfect place for a mental and visual time-out. Although there is still beauty to behold, but of the visually calming kind, like in the photo above.

The photo above I have borrowed from Airbnb's website, the agent through which we rented a flat in the centre of Rome. Having compared prices with various hotel rooms, we realised that we could rent a fully equipped flat at the same expense, and it turned out to be a very lucky move. This flat is simply stunning! Its location is superb, only a short stroll away from the Spanish Steps and within easy reach of all the other sights. The owner of the flat, Luigi, made us feel so welcome and made sure we felt well looked after throughout our stay. To anyone heading for Rome, I can highly recommend renting this flat, and you will get some good exercise too after all the wonderful pasta and gelato you will have had, as it is several floors up with no lift... You can see more photos and information here.

Arrivederci for now. See you soon again!

Helena

Green fuel...

Now... you may think that a blog post with this heading might throw itself into a debate on environmentally-friendly fuel, with great insights from the latest research in the energy sector. Perhaps a thought-provoking exposé on bio fuel. 

Alas, it is not. 

As much as I am very positive to any form of renewable energy source and every attempt to save the planet our children will inherit, my 'Green fuel' heading was hinting at a more spiritual form of green soul food. The one where Mother Nature is the guru and generous provider of fuel ...

On a walk yesterday, I simply had to slow down when I saw these forget-me-nots on the side of the road. A true spring sign that to me even carries a few fingerprints of summer. I just could not help myself... the flower picking season has started!

There is something so special about the many shades of green that are the signature of spring. Leaves uncurling, buds pushing their way out into the sunlight. Vibrant, almost trembling with excitement, light green little leafy loveliness.

Green that has gone a little feral is something the strict gardener might sniff at, but to which I am drawn like a moth to the light. I mean just look at the old stone steps above... does not the green carpet runner make these steps completely irresistible? Does it not make you want to climb these steps immediately to explore what fairy tale world lies beyond?

The forget-me-nots in this photo knocked me out in all their pretty, petite glory, when I stumbled upon them on our c-o-l-d Cornwall excursion over Easter. How could they possibly survive in a climate that made this reasonably hardy Swede shiver to the bone? Inspiring!

Even though I may flirt with the various shades of springy greens, my heart will always stay true to my special green sweetheart, green the shade of MOSS.

Remember this stunning spot from one of my posts from Cornwall? I can't seem to get it out of my head. The ultimate spot for some soul searching and contemplation, where the cob webs of the mind can be cleared and new thoughts be born, all the while one  is being gently fanned by the gorgeous ferns...

Thank you for visiting my blog and a special thank you to all of you kind readers who take the time to leave a little message, even though I am very invisible on your blogs. I read all your words and appreciate every one.

Thank you.

Green greetings and may the beginning of May bring magic to you all!

Love,

Helena

Going bananas on flowers...

Magnolias.

Just taste the word for a moment. Magnoliolioliolias.

Everywhere I look, their pink or white upside down bud skirts are filling the sky, ready to explode into full bloom any second. Alas, there are no magnolia trees in our garden...

... but when I went for a walk this morning, 

I found myself in one of those situations that could have 

ended up being rather embarrassing ...

You know the ones where you just can't stop yourself, but h-a-v-e to lean so far over a wall just to photograph a bud and nearly end up doing a nose dive straight down into someone else's garden (in this case probably risking breaking your neck too!)? All in the name of... art. Ehm.

 

Speaking of art. Well, speaking perhaps rather of someone introducing a humorous little twist to their otherwise very traditional (at least externally), beautiful old cottage. I must have walked past this house in Lacock a hundred times, but not until last weekend did I notice this gentleman (?) peering out on passers-by from a small window just below the roof.

Few things are as cheerful as little flower faces stretching their necks high up towards the sky, showing off their splendid colours and singing the tunes of summer... Flowers are good for the soul, at least for mine, and if I could, I would wear flowers in my hair every day...!

 The world is turning greener by the minute and I L-O-V-E it!

... and with this rather incoherent, or shall we say 'eclectic' post, 

I would like to wish you all a sunny weekend with flowers lining your paths!

Helena

Catching a bug...

See Mr Beetle in the big frame in the middle?

Well, I did not exactly "catch" him, not as such, but for the longest time I have been a huge admirer of my dear blog friend Lisa's art, and I am now thrilled to have one of her prints on my wall! Lisa sells her paintings, prints and greeting cards here, most of which have a lovely scent of Swedish summer, whether in the form of beautiful butterflies and other insects, a summery window or simply wild strawberries on a grass straw. You can visit her blog Lisa's Hus (Lisa's House) here and, again, her web gallery to see more here. (Her websites are in Swedish, but if you are interested in buying some of her lovely art, just send her an email in English to inquire further.)

As Mr Bug Beetle looked a little bit lonely up there, I thought two temporary nature buddies could join him on either side, until I find something better. I had some ten-year-old fabric in my cupboard, with small pictures of dragonflies, nuts etc, so a snippety-snip moment later, some fabric and two old frames were introduced to  the lovely bug print. So far, they seem to get along just fine! 

Some more colourful cushions are also in the pipeline, as it is time to springify this corner even more!

Having recently been to the dentist, I found myself slurping soup for most meals for a day or two, and feeling a little lazy, the soup was of the tinned kind rather than made from scratch. Sooo, what to do with the empty tins? Well, print out some lovely vintage dragonfly images from the internet and wrap around the tins is one option, and that is the one I went for. The daffodils singing on the last verse in the garden auditioned for the role of pretty props and even if some of them were a little over-eager, stretching towards the camera in a rather deliberate sort of SEE ME manner, I think they could be right for the job...

And so, the insect theme continues...

Wishing you a lovely weekend, with or without bugs!

Love,

   Helena

'Purpling' the patio...again!

To see the whole image, please click on it.

Dear readers,

Some of you may think there has been a little too much of other people's gardens here on my blog lately, so it is time to 'bring things home' again, and to do it in the way I like best... the purple way...

About a week ago, I could not wait any longer. Outside temperatures were still not very impressive, but the garden-greedy colour-yearning soul inside me just NEEDED some purple violets. Yes, it was definitely a bit of an emergency.

The rest of the garden is still looking more savage than tame, but a quick sweep of the patio, some petal power and a few hastily scattered accessories, and we could welcome our Sunday lunch guests to some outdoor living... or at least to enjoy the view from the table inside, as it was far too cold to even consider lunch on the lawn!

The new three-legged metal friend was a bargain but oh-so-heavy find from a local second-hand shop, thought to have come from an industrial unit, but I am not quite sure what it actually is. In my eyes, however, it screamed 'garden table' and after a quick choppety-chop with the bandsaw, a left-over floorboard became (yet another) table top. I will probably have to find some more durable wood for this outside all-weather friend, but for now, I can just take the table top in when the rain comes.

And the purple petal pretties? Well, I am in loooove!

Purple or not, I wish you all a very pretty week!

Helena

Ps. Recently, I 'caught' the most wonderful BUG, 

and next time I thought I might introduce him to you...

The Lost Gardens of Heligan II

Welcome to the Jungle...

...or the Lost Valley, the Melon Yard, the Sundial Garden, the Italian Garden, the Wishing Well...

or one of the other many, many lovely areas of The Lost Gardens of Heligan that bear names that speak to every pore of my green-curious being...!

The Jungle is a delightful oasis with several interconnected ponds over which small bridges and stepping stones allow you to explore the different views and see the sunlight filter through some stunning green ferns.

As for the rest of the gardens, yellow seemed to be the flavour of the month. Wherever we walked, we were greeted by sunny daffodils, and this particular little grouping of mossy pots caught my eye. So simple, yet the effect of many put together is so striking, I think.

OK, go on then, throw in a pond too, I can handle giving up "simple" for this...

In the woodland part of the gardens, there was more yellow happiness to enjoy and in fact, our whole Cornwall weekend was wrapped in yellow, as daffodils are cultivated - it seems - all over Cornwall. Wherever we drove, we came across rolling fields of these cheerful yellow faces and the rest of the family soon seemed a little fed up with my excitement about this - in their eyes - trivial fact...

Perhaps I am spoiled with too much of the beautiful sand-coloured Bath stone around where I live, but I can't help but  having a secret crush on old brownish red brick walls... 

When it comes to gardens, I sometimes think 'more is more', i e bring on flowers en masse! However, sometimes 'less is indeed more', and this simple trio of pots together with a metal bench, a yummy (and yes, slightly mossy!) brick wall with a few plants trying to grow out of the actual wall, well, it does it for me! 

OK then, perhaps just add one cushion. Or two. Ehm.

Cup of tea in the sun outside the greenhouse, anyone?

So, what about the name then, why The Lost Gardens of Heligan?

There is some interesting history to be found on their website, but I have here copied some facts from Wikipedia, as a shorter version for those of you who may not have the time to explore further right now.

"The gardens were created by members of the Cornish Tremayne family, over a period from the mid-18th century up to the beginning of the 20th century, and still form part of the family's Heligan estate. The gardens were neglected after the First World War, and restored only in the 1990s."

"Before the First World War  the garden required the services of 22 gardeners to maintain it, but that war lead to the deaths of no fewer than 16 of those gardners, and by 1916 the garden was being looked after by only 8 men. In the 1920s Jack Tremayne's love of Italy, which had earlier inspired the Italian Garden, led him to set up permanent home there, and lease out Heligan. The house was tenanted for most of the 20th century, used by the US Army during the Second World War, and then converted into flats and sold, without the gardens, in the 1970s. Against this background, the gardens fell into a serious state of neglect, and were lost to sight."

On their own website, The Lost Gardens of Heligan describe how they 'rediscovered' the gardens...

"Our discovery of a tiny room, buried under fallen masonry in the corner of one of the walled gardens, was to unlock the secret of their demise. A motto etched into the limestone walls in barely legible pencil still reads “Don’t come here to sleep or slumber” with the names of those who worked there signed under the date – August 1914. We were fired by a magnificent obsession to bring these once glorious gardens back to life in every sense and to tell, for the first time, not tales of lords and ladies but of those “ordinary” people who had made these gardens great, before departing for the Great War."

Call me an old romantic fool, but this tickles the - well - the old romantic fool in me!

Think bee hives are great but do not find them so pleasing on the eye? Try 'bee boles'! Before the development of modern bee hives, they were a practical way of keeping bees in many parts of Britain. You can read more about them here. 

Hm. Not so keen on keeping bees myself, but I would not mind a wall like this!

There we are. It is time to say goodbye to these lovely gardens for now, but I do hope I will be able to go back one day in summertime, when I hope to see the flower garden in full bloom, see if the melon yard is indeed bursting with juicy melons and explore all the bits we did not have time to see this time. And if I do, I will certainly bring my camera again!

Wishing you all a lovely weekend and 

thank you for visiting and leaving such lovely comments. 

You brighten my days!

Helena

The Lost Gardens of Heligan I

Did you guess it? 

Yes, I found them, The Lost Gardens of Heligan, and I am very glad I did!

Having long admired a photo in a friend's house of this fair lady, I was more than a little excited to finally get to meet her in person. On purchasing the tickets at the entrance, I was eager to find out immediately where to find her and asked the lady selling the tickets where I could find... 'eh, that woman who's lying down... you know... covered in green stuff... eh'. Yes, that was a memorable display of my eloquence... 

However, this particular ticket selling lady happened to also be a particularly kind and service-minded ticket selling lady, who seemed to be able to ignore the stuttering Swede's complete linguistic train wreck, smiled and said "Oh, you mean the Mud Maid!" and pointed her out on the map. 

"Mud Maid"?!?!? Not quite the pretty, dream-like name I had envisioned, but undeterred, I ushered my family in the direction of her restful spot.

Please click on the image if you want to see the whole image, without the top of her head missing...

And there she was.

As soon as I met this sleeping green beauty, I realised that names matter very little when you are as striking a  señorita as this. When I have seen pictures of her in the past, her arm has also been covered in moss or ivy, so I guess that perhaps she had had a small injury that had recently been seen to, and that the moss has yet to grow back. Which I do hope it does, as it now looks like she has gone for a rest, forgetting to take her dishwashing gloves off...

Rubber glove images aside, this is one of those views that is somehow not done justice on a two-dimensional screen. In real life, there is something very special about this wonderful lady, something so peaceful, so tranquil. Something that speaks to my love of unexpected and fun creations in and of nature itself. And the fact that she is in the wilder woodland part of this large and multidimensional garden makes it ten times more interesting than had she been a more "formal" green statue in the formal parts of the garden.

Oh dear, here am I rambling on. We have a lot more grounds to cover, so here we go!

Flowers. FLOWERS. 

How starved we are of some colourful growing power after a long winter, 

and how soul-nurturing they are!

Terrific tulips ready to explode into full tulip mood any day? Check. Symmetrical lines of terracotta pots creating a feature in itself? Check. Oh, and an old brick wall to offset the whole display in the best possible way, making the squeaky green leaves squeak in perfect harmony against the brownish red bricks. Yep, check that too.

Aaah.

Yes, and then there was that "small" greenhouse in the same walled garden. The kind of greenhouse that makes me want to hold a photo of it up to our tiny, tiny, decrepit old greenhouse in our garden and whisper "grow, grow, please will you grow into this?"...

Magnificent mini greenhouse, flowering (!) rhododendron, more tulip squeakiness and lots and lots of dovecotes - love them all!

I am not sure, but I think these are balls of box, and I am quite certain that this is the story of mummy box, daddy box and the three little box babies, all lined up to salute the clock tower of Heligan House (private) in the morning...

SO wonderful to see so many flowers out! 

I felt like I was drinking them all up with my eyes, eager to try to store them in my imaginary box of visual candy, ready to be brought out and enjoyed whenever a grey day comes along....

In the distance, you can see the sea - not exactly a painful view to put up with as you are strolling around the grounds...

Peek-a-boo to you too, Mr Giant's Head!

Did I mention how much I love a fun and creative garden?

This rather 'nosey' gentleman may be no Richard Gere,

 but he still won my heart and made me smile!

I am afraid it does not end here... 

so if you are up for another stroll around The Lost Gardens of Heligan, 

join me again in a few days...

Until then, to all of you mud maids and giants out there,

have a lovely day!

Helena