If an attraction has the word ‘botanic’ in it, there will usually be squees of delight from me, interest with a modicum of indifference from Mr VP and a whole day devoted to said attraction.  The National Botanic Garden of Wales is no different and was a much-anticipated day out for both of us.  Having heard about it on various TV programmes and had it recommended to us by lots of people, we knew it was somewhere we had to go.  My last botanic garden was, I think, Benmore Botanic Garden (back in May 2007!) a majestic place nestled in a deep-sided valley in the far West of Scotland.  Obviously, given my excitement about visiting this garden, I was well overdue a visit!

The National Botanic Garden of Wales is different to Benmore in many ways.  Whilst Benmore was concerned very much with trees, shrubs and particularly old and interesting samples of flora, its Welsh counterpart is a real show-garden in the truest sense.  Of course there are large open areas to explore, with plenty of trees, but it is not as dense or as rich as Benmore, which feels more like a garden than a museum.  The Welsh garden is a sprawling estate, with a giant biome-like greenhouse and various themed areas to explore.  It seemed to me to be a cross between the hugely popular outdoor museum The Eden Project and Benmore, but missing a little bit of the personality and thrill-inducing awe of either.

That’s not to say that it isn’t a splendid place to visit.  Far from it.  Once into the garden, one winds their way from the gatehouse up an enchanting, lightly-sloped path upon which a cobbled-bottom rill runs down, flowing in curliqueues from a pond up at the top to a water feature at the bottom.  I love water features that are cleverly implemented and this one was undoubtedly a statement about water’s importance to the whole garden.  Almost everywhere you go in the garden you will find ponds or water features, reinforcing the message that water is vital to life.

The first stop for most is, of course, the Great Glasshouse.  It has entered the record books as the world’s largest single-span glasshouse and approaching it you do begin to notice how epically proportioned it is.  From the moment you step inside, your senses are assaulted by the varietyof plants, the twittering of some of the birds who have made the glasshouse their home and the sheer size of it.

The glasshouse is divided up into six main sections, which each represent an area of the world; such as Australia, California, Chile and South Africa etc.  Despite thinking it would be much warmer, like the biomes at the Eden Project, the great glasshouse maintains a fairly constant ambient temperature, with heating in winter to prevent it getting colder than 9ºC and computerised windows, which open and close as necessary.

Knowing what I do about plants, I already knew that most of our much-beloved garden favourites are naturalised from South Africa.  But whilst this glasshouse enlightens those about just how much has been brought over, it does a stellar job of displaying plants that simply can’t be brought over or introduced.  Such as this amazing King Protea.  Each of these flowers is the size of a dinner plate and we were incredibly lucky to be around at the right time to see it open.  Gosh, how wonderful would it be to have one of these growing in your garden?!

I want to call this plant below a sempervivum, but I’m not sure that it is.  My mother had one this colour, I seem to recall, but hers wasn’t quite the size of this one!  My only niggle with the gardens was that their signage wasn’t as rigorous as it could’ve been.  Signs were either hidden by growing foliage or missing entirely and weren’t always directly next to the plants that they were supposedly naming.  The addition of common names, even sporadically, rather than the purely Latinate names used, would have given people a better connection to the plants that they were seeing.  Regardless of its name though, isn’t it spectacular?  When a plant’s leaflets are tightly formed like this, you can see the Golden Ratio perfectly at work.

Speaking of golden ratios in action…

Ahhh, one of my favourite cut flowers: a gerbera!  On anything else, I wouldn’t like this pink.  But on a gerbera?  I’m in love.

Bottle-brush plants!  How can anyone walk past this and not smile at its largesse in size, colour and joy that it offers to anyone willing to look?

 

These unidentified pink flowers, below, had the most wonderful blue pollen, which when I put some on my finger, could have been used as eyeshadow, so pretty was the hue.  Not only does it have pretty pollen, its size was immense.  I think that’s what is most alien about these plants – it’s as if everyone who walks into the great glasshouse has shrunken in size.  This plant was over ten feet tall and was so wide that I would struggle to get my arms around it.  Yet it still retains its grace and delicacy.

Apparently, the strawberry below was one of the original wild cultivars which was hybridised to create the modern garden strawberry plant!  I would love to see what its fruits look like once ripe.

Despite being out of the worst that the Welsh weather can throw at us, (on the day we went, driving rain…), a swift look out of the window reminds you that you are not in Chile or Australia or South Africa but are in the depths of rural Wales.

This is my kind of travelling!  No need to be frisked at airport security, or spend days packing and unpacking and re-packing.  Continents can be hopped in mere moments.  Who needs an aeroplane?

A clever little signposting system was in place to remind people which area they were browsing.  This lizard is based on the art of Indigenous Australians, whilst each area had stylised rocks and carvings depicting their nation’s own art.

It was nice to be able to say that I had grown some of these flowers in my own garden.  The plant below, a Helichrysum bracteatum – or everlasting flower – is just what the name implies: a straw-textured flowerhead which, when cut, will last indefinitely.  I grew white and pink variations and kept the flowerheads in a jar.

Whilst there were lots of plants that were easily recognisable, there were some that certainly were more alien than native!  Isn’t the colouring on this plant odd?  The pink is where the green should be or vice versa.  Very odd.

Golden ratio in action again.  Both Mr VP and I loved this bush, in the Californian section, for its perfectly fractal, geometric shape.

I do love aquilegias.  This one is a particularly pretty salmon colour with such dainty yellow heads!

Oh, irises.  Renowned throughout the world for their uses in medicine and perfume, their beauty is almost second to none.

Another iris from another part of the glasshouse.  This one is, if memory serves, from the South African section, whilst the one above was from the Californian.  The Californian is much less showy than the South African.  Both absolutely stunning though.

There is something very unnerving about calla lillies.  I don’t know why, but plants with hoods are a little spooky.  Some people believe that they are the plants of death and other hooded plants are also associated with death.  Perhaps it’s to do with the grim reaper’s hooded figure?  Who knows.  I do think this lily is a bit spooky.

Outside the great glasshouse, it was hard to take a good photo as rains pelted us and winds were blowing gales around us.  I did, however, manage to get a picture of this glorious tulip.

Escaping from the rain, Mr VP and I ran into the hot house.  This place is a joy if you like orchids (particularly dendrobiums, of which they have many, rather than the usual phalenopsis!), calatheas and all things tropical.  It’s not a huge hot house, by any means, but it was interesting.  I saw a camphor tree and a banana tree with lots of proto-bananas first-hand.  Not something usually seen in rural Wales!

This water sculpture marked both the beginning and the end of our tour through the gardens.  I managed to come away from the place with only one plant (their shop is lovely and very tempting); a gift for my mother of a miniature azalea.

I did, of course, take photos using my trusty 35mm camera.  I think these were on a cheapy Agfa, though they might’ve been on a Lomo 100.

One of my favourite places to be is around pelargoniums and geraniums.  They are some of my favourite plants in the world and this not-so-little beauty was no exception.  It is an epically-proportioned cedar-scented geranium.  It smelled amazing.  If it was up to me, I’d have a garden filled with these and I would make wonderful scented pouches to line drawers and scent wardrobes.

And a bit more colour to finish off with.  All in all, we had a marvellous day and would highly recommend visiting if you’re ever in Carmarthenshire!

One of the days we were in Wales, we went to the Felinwynt Rainforest Centre.  Now I haven’t been to a butterfly house since I was a child, and a young one at that, but I remember one that we used to go to when on holiday in Devon and another that we occasionally visited on school trips.  It was one place that allowed for a proper ‘suspension of disbelief‘ because, for the short few hours that you are there, you’re in the middle of the Amazon rainforest and anything is possible.  In your mind as a child, you don an exporer’s hat and get to explore what is (certainly to us Brits) a completely alien world.  Butterflies bigger than your hands (or at that age, your head!) float past and will, if you’re lucky, alight for a short while on you.

As an adult, our ability to live on pure imagination changes, of course, but I still felt an inkling of that magic when we visited the rainforest centre.  The owner, a really nice chap who beamed with a real love for the place, showed us around and told us about the butterflies and where he gets them from (dedicated butterfly breeders!), which send him rods with the crysalides (I never knew that was the plural of chrysalis!) already pupating and ready to hatch.  Carefully kept at the right temperature, the butterflies begin to emerge after a couple of days.  But as we know, they don’t last long.  The beautiful white-and-black veined butterflies would last a mere two weeks from the moment they emerged, whilst one of the little black and red Postman butterflies below – a very understated butterfly – would last the longest: two months.

The butterflies emerge with their wings deflated and spend a good few hours inflating them.  Whilst they are at this stage, they are fragile and prone to be predated.  Thankfully, no predators exist (they’re out of the reach of prying small hands!) in the butterfly house and they are safe to emerge at their own pace.

Though it’s not the largest butterfly house I’ve been around, it was well-stocked.  We saw many, many different butterflies, flitting about our heads.  Ponds were full of koi and goldfish and the small tadpoles of British toads, of which there were quite a few, hiding under the lush rainforest flora.  Unfortunately, due to the severity of the weather earlier this year, the owner explained that he had lost his whole leafcutter ant colony and was awaiting a new one.  He demonstrated their own special path, high up in the canopy.

One of the butterflies we saw was a Blue morpho (Morpho peleides) and looked similar on the outside to the Owl butterfly above.  We were desperately hoping to get a photo of them with their wings open, but I think they were onto our plan and decided to play it coy.  I don’t mind in the slightest, though, as their outsides are just as interesting – even if not as colourful – as their insides!

I cannot imagine the amount of pressure there must be, instinctually, to go forth and do what butterflies do because they have such a little time in which to do it.  I spent a little while wondering if they thought it was a short, whistle-stop journey, this thing called life, or whether to them the time stretched for ages.  Of course, they do not live merely two weeks; they’ve had months as chubby caterpillars, feeding themselves silly so that they can emerge as a butterfly.  I do wonder, however, whether any caterpillar knows of its fate and realises that to pupate is to put a cap on one’s life expectancy.  I would love to know what it feels like to pupate and emerge as something else.  A wonderful metaphor for humans, don’t you think?  Hmmm…

I certainly enjoyed seeing them all here and how they each fly slightly differently and choose to rest in different places.  I had never thought of butterflies having such different personalities before.

Aren’t they spectacular?  Each pattern made of millions of nanometer-tiny scales of colour.

If I had the space, I would quite like a hot-house like this one.  Somewhere where I could come in winter and gaze upon a microcosm of tropical warmth and growth.  I’d grow enormous heliotropes and blood-red hibiscus flowers and elephant-eared begonias.  It would be lovely.  A girl can dream.

A range of pretty little zebra finches twittered in the tree-tops, occasionally preening each other and dancing about the branches.  Whilst the ground-dwelling birds, in this case quails, had dust-baths and scuttled around one’s feet.

By searching, I found out that these black and white beauties are called Malabar Tree Nymphs (Idea malabarica) and in flight, they were very ethereal and nymph-like.  Their name becomes them!

We were incredibly lucky, timing the visit as we did, because we were the only ones there.  Having the whole place to ourselves only heightened the magic.  This little butterfly below is a Postman butterfly (Heleconius melpomene), sitting on the sugar-water-covered chrysanthemums, is one of the longest living rainforest butterflies.  A joy to watch.

Possibly my favourite pictures from the centre.

This is an Owl butterfly (Caligo eurilochus) with beautiful markings on the outside of its wings, but very plain inside.  It had just emerged and seemed a little dozy.  Just look at the detail on his/her compound eye and the wonderful curl to its proboscis.  How clever this little butterfly is to mimick so well the bark of a tree (and the eye of a predator!).

Water, in this case literally the trees’ breath, was condensing and dripping constantly.  And it was hot in there.  It was a hot day anyway, but in there it was incredibly hot and humid. Not good conditions for electrical equipment or cameras, but we were enjoying ourselves so much that we couldn’t tear ourselves away.

I managed to get some amazing photos on my 35mm camera, too.  These were taken on (I think) a Lomo 100 film.  If not, it was a Kodak Ultramax 400, but I think it was the 100 because they’ve come out a little on the dark side despite it being relatively light in there.  Gah!  So good!

My dream hothouse would look and smell like this one did.  Damp, warm and teaming with life.  Look at the sheer size of that leaf!

The Malabar Tree Nymph was certainly the easiest to photograph and one of the most photogenic!  Such a great day out if you’re near Cardigan at all and well worth it because the owner really is passionate about the rainforest education and of course, the butterflies.

I’ve been having a hard time recently, dealing with things that I’ve read online and which I find to be full of a particular kind of obtuse venom (but which were, thankfully, not directed at myself).  I tend not to write about my views, political or otherwise, on this blog because I want it to serve a purpose which is a-political and written with nothing but love.  I tend to look at such things, save them in my memory for a future date, then avert my gaze and look past the things I don’t like, because to respond to every comment which I find abhorrent, would be to turn my blog into something that I never wanted it to be.

I’m sure I’m not the only one to feel this way about things written online, but to say nothing at all is againt my moral compass; it grates at me and leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.  You can see my position. Particularly when those writing such things are uneducated in the subjects upon which they preach so vehemently.  There will come a time when I do respond, in a wide-ranging op-ed style and put forth a riposte to some of the views.  Until then, my aim is to let it cogitate, so that I can write adeptly and with academic poise.

I didn’t want my Sunday to be tied up thinking about such issues and so once we’d got up, showered and breakfasted, we went for a walk.

It was a glorious, warm May day.  Whilst I tried to release the knots that had formed whilst thinking about the aforementioned issues, I turned to looking at the small and the otherwise unnoticed.  It was a temporary but effective release.  Though we weren’t out for long, we managed to get pink-tinged with sunburn but also deeply glad that we’d had time outside in the glorious spring air.

We spotted lots of interesting wildlife.  Most abundant were the St Mark’s flies, which, newly emerged, were flying about and around us for the whole walk.  Thankfully they don’t bite (they’re vegetarian!), but getting one in the eye / up the nose / in the mouth was not a fun experience.  A little further down, we saw the great white wings of a barn owl on a late-morning hunt.  A little further still, where the trees are thinner and replaced by reeds, we saw two lovely little birds: a reed warbler and a reed bunting.  Both were singing out to the world; a song of joy and warmth (the latter sounding like an old dial-up modem at times!).

In the short time since we had last visited this place, plants had taken hold and turned the cool winter browns into bright, warm spring greens.  Lesser trefoils (Trifolium dubium) were creeping through the brambles and reeds; apparently happy neighbours with the assorted other wildflowers.

Glorious white dead-nettles (Lamium album) with their pretty pink-tinged heads, grew in great number, filling the gaps and making a welcome floral addition to the vignette.

However, as ever, apple blossom was the best find of the day.  Pink-tinged and sweet-smelling, these blossoms made for photographing, smelling, appreciating and noting down — so that in autumn you can come back to collect some wild fruit.  It was a good way to relax and put some distance between me and my worries, so that I may deal with them in time to come, in a more dispassionate manner.

Undoubtedly my favourite pastime, and my favourite day of the holiday, was when we decided to go castle hunting.  I find the grandeur and size of castles, with their imposing stone structures, fortifications and grand solars, absolutely fascinating.  However well they are preserved (or not), I can usually get a pretty good idea of what Medieval castle life was like and I love to imagine myself as a chatelaine of my own castle some 1000 years ago.  I also tend to get very strong feelings in these places; as if the stones have held onto all of what has happened there and I can feel it bubbling around me.  Plus, it’s a great excuse to grab a camera and get out somewhere new and have a proper adventure.

Whilst there are ruined castles dotted over most of the UK, there are pockets where there are a lot of castles.  Scotland has a lot, as it was made up of clan-kings who were ever trying to keep the dreaded English out.  Wales is the same.  These castles have seen the bloodiest battles, endured changes in kingship and nationality and survived the ravages of the best part of a milennium (some longer).  Within fifteen miles of where we were staying there were no less than ten different castles.  Each one built differently, with a unique character and feel about it.

On the day we went castle-hunting, the weather was amazing.  Blue skies and lots of sun made it possible for us both to prove that it IS possible to leave Wales with not only a tan but some sunburn (!) too!  This was a photo from the beginning of our journey to find castles.  I had to pull over in a layby to capture some of the majesty of the morning; of Wales in spring.  Though Blake was speaking about England when he wrote about green and pleasant lands, I’m quite sure that he could’ve had Wales in mind when he wrote it.

Our first was Dryslwyn castle, which we found quite accidentally whilst searching for others.  As Dryslwyn is more ruined than some castles in the vicinity, it isn’t such a great tourist trap – which means that it’s a) free and b) quiet.  There were no queues to get in or fees to pay and we could amble up at our own speed.  In all, for both views and feel, it was my favourite of the castles that we visited.

From the ramparts of Dryslwyn you can see Paxton’s Tower, a relatively recent (C19th) folly in dedication to Lord Nelson following his death at the Battle of Trafalgar.  Obviously the people of the castle would not have seen the folly, but imagine their grand position; able to see for miles around and from this vantage, they would have had plenty of time to ready themselves against an attack by the English.

The river Towy (Afon Tywi) is perfhaps one of the most majestic parts of the castle, at least it is on a good day, looking out from the highest parts of the ruined castle walls. Known as the King of Welsh rivers, and the biggest in Wales, it reminds me so much of the beautiful Dordogne river which flowed past the imposing and strikingly well-maintained Château féodal de Beynac (I just realised that I hardly posted about the trip we took around France! Argh! It was so long ago now, back in 2008, but the castle was very good indeed, I recommend it highly!). The views from both were spectacular and made Dryslwyn all the more special because we were virtually alone to experience it.

Being on the river Tywi, the castle would have had excellent trade links and food as the Tywi is one of the richest sources of sewin or sea-trout, which has a far cleaner flavour than river trout. It is also home to Royal Sturgeon, which when caught, instantly becomes the property of the Crown, so good is its flavour.

I like to think that these walls do speak their own history and if you listen very hard, at the right time, they will share with you a feeling of some of it.  Who stood at the window (or arrow-slit) that would’ve been around here, and contemplated this little-changing view?  Was it a woman, a maid, a queen?  A king?

It gives me shivers to see this place and how grand it once was.  It was finally partly demolished, some time at the end of the Middle Ages, to prevent it being re-fortified and used against the English.  The stones were robbed and used to build other properties, but quite a bit of the castle remains.

Ah, this view…  I said to Mr VP that I would have been quite happy to spend the whole holiday on top of this hill by this castle enjoying this view.  He concurred.

The next castle was Carreg Cennen.  As it was a bank holiday, and one with beautiful weather at that (which never happens in the UK), Carreg Cennen was heaving.  As the castle is under private ownership, there was a charge to get in, but it wasn’t much and was worth it because the castle was well preserved.  Unlike Dryslwyn, which you do have to use your imagination to reconstruct, Carreg Cennen has rooms, windows, balconies and most of its original portcullis and gatehouse.  And long-drop toilets (the square tunnel in the photo below)…

This castle is much bigger, I imagine, than Dryslwyn ever was but that was because Edward I of England (the aptly-named and much-loathed Edward Longshanks) bulldozed the original Welsh castle and put one of his design on top.  That sort of behaviour encapsulates the Anglo-Welsh relationship over the last 1000 years.  However the site has been found to have been used by prehistoric peoples and also Romans, which hints at its position, legendary views and good trade routes (and possibly even religious significance).

I am a sucker for windows.  Unlike the Chateau de Beynac, which had proper, large leaded-glass windows, most castles in the UK opted for arrow-slits instead.  The Château de Beynac, sits on a large, rocky promontory and thus was easily defensible, whilst this castle would be easier to ‘take’, I suppose, and thus the need for arrow-slits.

Though it looks sunny and light in the room now, once it had a roof and four walls and no light apart from the arrow-slits, I can imagine it would have felt cold, damp and dark.

I’ve managed to do quite a good job at making it look like we were completely alone in the castle, but I can assure you it took many minutes of waiting to get a photo of the door without someone in the middle of it / walking past it!

Another thing about Wales: they have kept their language very much alive.  Thus, every sign will be in both languages, including road signs, maps and even place names.  What is Swansea to a Brit is Abertawe to the Welsh.  It’s not the easiest language to pronounce or make sense of, but ‘chamber’ can be seen in the Welsh Siambr, if you say it without thought.  The Welsh word for museum though?  Amgueddfa – still a mouthful.

A few days later, we made another discovery, and one of the most unexpected delights: the castle in the aptly-named Newcastle Emlyn (Castellnewydd Emlyn).  How beautiful it looks in the afternoon sun.  What the photo doesn’t portray is just how horrid and wet it had been that morning – rain had poured and gales lashed our little cottage.  However at around 3pm, the skies brightened and the sun shone.

Castles look even better in black and white.  I took 5 films on holiday and though I did take black and white films, I didn’t use any of them (and I’ve yet to get the colour photos developed) so all of these black and white pics were courtesy of my dSLR camera.  I’ve heard mixed reports about whether taking a photo using the black and white setting on a dSLR is better than taking it in colour and changing it to black and white in post-production.  I will have to experiment.  Mr VP says it is to do with bit-depth and that colour photos will take higher bit depths which are retained in post-processing, whilst they are lost if they’re taken directly on the dSLR using a black and white setting.  Regardless of bit-depth, I quite like these.

Ruined castles nowadays are, I would theorise, a very important part of the UK’s natural environment.  As they go to ruin, they are preserved as sites deemed worthy of special protection, either as a Scheduled Monument (protected under the 1979 Act) or just as a council or nationally-owned place of interest.  Either way, by them sitting here in perpetuity, they and the land around them are protected from being bulldozed or disturbed.  Thus, they become a hive of life for all kinds of flora and fauna, which may otherwise be wiped out of our landscape.  I’ve yet to get my books out and identify all of the many castle-wall-dwelling plants that we saw, but if you look on the photo below, you can see just some of the many species we spotted.

The people of Newcastle Emlyn have a very special claim to fame.  They claim that on this spot, the last dragon was slain.  If you know anything about the Welsh flag, you will know that on it is the Welsh dragon, a symbol tied up in many hundreds – if not thousands – of years of Celtic mythology.  Some say that it comes from the Roman Draco standard-bearers, others that it is embedded in the myths and legends surrounding Merlin and King Arthur.  As to the whys and wherefores, it’s anyone’s guess, but it is a mighty symbol of Welsh pride dating back many, many years.  I’d like to think that I have stood where it all happened, but I’d like to see a dragon alive even more!

The stonework that still remains demonstrates just how good at building the old stonemasons really were.  Gosh, look at the beauty of that arch.

All in all, a pretty perfect couple of days.  My affinity for castles renewed; a new guide-book detailing every bastle (fortified house) and castle in Wales and a very big smile on my face (and a little sunburn, too!).  It’s no exaggeration to say that I miss these places quite a bit.

There is another castle post coming, one from the mighty Cilgerran castle.  But this one post is long enough for now, methinks!

(For non-Welsh speakers, that’s Welcome to Wales!)

Mr VP and I have been on holiday for the last week in Wales and have come back with smiles on our faces because it was a really good holiday.  Wales is a stunning place; a place of dichotomies with an old language, which to hear spoken is not only magical but a reminder of how old the country is and how well they have kept their heritage alive.  For the most part, Wales is entirely untouched by the ravages of modernity and straddles an odd place between cosmopolitan city life (Cardiff) and sixteenth-century sheep-farming (everywhere else).  Wherever one casts their eyes there are tree-covered hills and lush, green valleys which rise and fall in the sighs of an old land.  The pride of the Welsh in their nation is second to none and though they can be insular (Cardigan, as a town, seemed particularly so, whilst Newcastle Emlyn was much friendlier to ‘non-natives’), it is purely born out of a desire to protect their land.  A land that is worth protecting.

It’s hard to explain the holiday itself because it was so good and so incredibly busy.

It is a magical place, Wales.  The rugged coastline hugs the equally rugged land.  Green meeting grey-blue and battling for their own space and both support the hardy people of this lush and verdant land. On our second day we went castle-hunting, something we hadn’t done since Northumberland, and to our delight we found no less than three.  After accidentally finding the first, whilst looking for the second, I knew that this was the kind of place that was made for me.  A place with a castle on virtually every hill, is my kind of place.  Tales of fights between the English and the Welsh, of the mighty Owain Glyndŵr and his valiant attempts to hold Wales for the Welsh.  Stories of princes and kings; of palaces with lavish decor and equally lavish defenses.

The holiday awakened a longing and a yearning to travel and explore and a desire to make positive steps towards a different – though hopefully better – life.  I spent evenings having baths and reading poetry from the English Lit student’s poetry bible: the Norton Anthology of Poetry Volume 5.  A weighty tome full of some of the best poetry that has ever been written, from Beowulf to Larkin and all in between.  I burnt incense and listened to the lambs in the neighbouring field bleating and playing as only chubby new-born lambs can.  Before the weight of the world and their fate dawns fully upon them.  I weighed words and felt them wash over me and was compelled to write them down, lest they be forgotten.  Somehow the most important things to remember were the warbling calls of the two blackcaps as they flitted around the cottage and the smell of the land as it exhaled.  The simple things; the things I miss; the things that I don’t have where I live.

So much to say about it and yet it’s all go at the moment.  The calls of blackbirds and the bleating of lambs have been replaced by the sound of the home: the washing machine and raindrops pelting the windows.  The whole holiday was so quick that it is still percolating; the words still forming in a slow-drip fashion, in my mind.  I’m trying to form the words to tell you what the air smelled like and find adjectives to describe the shade of pink of a Protea flower in full bloom.  It will come in time.  After all, there is “…time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of toast and tea” (I’m going through a belated T.S. Eliot phase).  So, with 1200+ photos to sift through, a Smash Journal to fill, Mr VP’s birthday to prepare for and a lot of laundry to do, please bear with me!