Wedding gifts

We had an incredible wedding last Saturday. The forecast was for heavy rain, but it rained in the morning, early afternoon and late in the evening, but our wedding was in the late afternoon and so we were incredibly lucky. I've put a selection of photographs taken by Ian and Kitty Wright on our wedding website.

Since Ian and I have already been living together for five years we decided to ask guests to contribute towards our honeymoon rather than to get us gifts, but a few people were kind enough to get us some keepsakes to remind us of the day.

This adorable glitter globe (can one call them snowglobes if they don't have snow?) was from my Dad, Jo and Rich. Ian took it to the ceremony venue and placed it on the table that we sat at to sign the register.

This lovely wall plaque was sent all the way from the other side of the Atlantic by the Canadian Chickadee and English Robin. We've hung it on our kitchen wall so we can see it every day. Thanks again to you both for the lovely surprise.

My Mum brought us these lovely flowers two days before the wedding and we decided to take them along to the ceremony to decorate the room:

Thank you to everyone who made our day so special.

Wedding photos

It may appear from this blog that I've taken very few photos recently. That's not actually the case, but I don't want to share some of my recent photos until after our wedding next week.

We've decided that in addition to the official wedding photos we'll have some of our own, many of which will be taken before the big day. Of course there'll be none of the people until the day, but there are a surprising number of other wedding-related things that can be photographed in advance. Our focus so far has been on favours, programmes and jewellery, but when my dress and the flowers arrive next week I'll be able to take lots more. There are a couple of advantages of taking pictures prior to the wedding - the first being that I can play with backgrounds that won't be available on the day (our wedding programmes and rings have already been on a couple of walks with us and Dad kindly sent us some wheat for a photograph) and the second being that I can choose what light I want to photograph things in. The forecast for the day is cloudy with a 40% chance of it not raining heavily (as GB puts it) so even if there's no sunshine on the day at least some of the photos will be sunny.

Pottery Pond

We had to go to Bovey Tracey twice last week for wedding-related things. The place we were going was on a road we hadn't been to before and we were pleased to find a large pond that we hadn't previously visited.


Although it was drizzling we had a lovely walk around the pond (we did not make it as far as Hay Tor!) and met a friendly family of geese who were bent on the destruction of some flag iris:

We then proceeded to Little Bradley Ponds - one of my favourite nature reserves because it is such a good spot for dragonflies. There were few dragonflies about on such a cloudy wet day, but I was very excited to see a snake, or at least the tail end of a snake as it slithered very quickly into some gorse as I approached it. Needless to say I spent the next half an hour searching for another, but it was not to be.

Although I only saw a pair of chasers, damselflies were more abundant:

A walk from Sowton village

Now that summer has arrived I have so many things to blog about, but with our wedding only a month away and the garden and house requiring a lot of attention there seems little time for blogging.

Last week we drove to the village of Sowton - just on the other side of the motorway from our house. Unfortunately an entire row of thatched cottages were destroyed in a fire there only last month.

This photo, taken from a distance, was the only one I took because some of the owners were there moving furniture out and I didn't want to be insensitive. You can't really see the scale of the destruction here, but it shocked us both. The whole area still smelled of burning.

Our walk from Sowton took us past Bishop's Court, home to 20 Bishops of Exeter over a 300 year period before it was sold in 1546. I'm not actually sure how old the house is:


The thatched gatehouse:

We saw our first ladybird larva of the year in a hedgerow:

A beautiful field of barley:

This Ephemera species of mayfly was near the river Clyst:

On the Way Home

On our way back from Hampshire we stopped in the New Forest to see the Rufus stone:



We got hungry near Dorchester and there being no services apart from a McDonalds we drove through the town-centre to look for a supermarket. The road passes very close to the Keep Military Museum:

Built from Portland stone in 1879 the Keep was designed to resemble a Norman Castle.

West Dean Gardens

Some other photos taken at West Dean:

I do love alliums and they look so at home amongst vegetables and herbs:

The thatched apple store in the wall surrounding the orchard is delightful:

The 300 foot long pergola is nearly one hundred years old:


During the winter 104 climbers are detached from the columns, pruned and retied - a massive job, but they do look beautiful


The view of West Dean College (formerly the house) from the arboretum:

West Dean Gardens - The Fruit Trees

The fruit trees at West Dean are shaped into some wonderful shapes.

Some grow up the walls in fans:

cordons:

or s-shapes (I don't know the proper name for these):

others near the walls include four-winged goblets:

and pyramids:

In the centre of the orchard the trees are left to grow naturally:

In the vegetable garden the borders are divided by fruit trees trained as espaliers:

or in arches: