The Alnwick Garden

Now 30 Days Wild has ended, normal service is resumed and I can get back to telling you about our Northumberland adventures. Amazingly it's been a month since our holiday! How I wish we were still there, we had such a good time. Never mind, it's nice to relive it through these posts and today I'm going to show you The Alnwick Garden which is part of, but separate from, the castle. The first gardens were laid down in 1750 but fell into disrepair over the years.

It was the current Duchess of Northumberland, Jane Percy, who masterminded their redevelopment in 1997 at a cost of many millions of pounds. The Grand Cascade was one of the first parts to be completed. There are different jets of water which fly into the air at regular intervals. It was a lovely sight as we sat looking up at it with our Turkish delight ice creams :)

Down each side were these cool green tunnels - very welcome on a hot, sunny day (and probably on the more usual rainy Northumberland days too!)

Apologies for the spots on the lens - darn those waterfalls!

One of our first ports of call, and the one I was most excited about, was the Poison Garden. You can only enter on a free guided tour and are warned not to taste, touch or smell any of the plants. Some of them can only be grown by special licence. A shame then that the tour only lasted about 10 minutes and covered barely a handful of plants. I wanted to hear and see so much more.

What we did see were plants like the giant hogweed, though this is only a baby.

And cannabis. You get the joke in the sign, right?

Luckily the rest of the gardens can be explored at will. One of my favourite parts was the cherry orchard.

It was past the flowering season of the trees but I loved the informal, billowy planting at their base.

Dotted around were characters which are part of the current fairy tale theme.

Now we're in the walled ornamental garden which was originally the kitchen garden.

Loved all the drifts of tulips.

More fairy tale characters.

Pretty peonies.

Meniscus

Then into the serpent's garden, so named because of the shape of the planting rather than what you can find there.

What you do find are eight water sculptures, designed by William Pye, which explore the effects physics has on water. This one is bowl vortex.

The water glass was our favourite as you could walk down into the middle of it...

...and experience the cascading water. This was definitely our favourite part of the gardens.

A short hop, skip and a jump away is the bamboo labyrinth. Chickpea liked it but I was a bit 'blah'.

Exiting the gardens we headed over to view the other well-known part of the site...

....The Treehouse. It's the largest wooden treehouse in Europe and houses a restaurant and cafe.

All the fairy lights must make it quite magical in the evening.

The rabbits were definitely impressed.

Best view of the day, looking down the river Aln with the castle on the left.

We really enjoyed the gardens and it must look spectacular in mid-summer when all the flowers are in full bloom. It's rather pricey but we bought a joint ticket for the castle and garden and also bought them at the tourist office which was cheaper.

Next time I think I'll show you a walk along the coast. x

Year in books: July 2016

This year I'm taking part in the Year in Books organised by Laura at Circle of Pine Trees, with the aim of reading at least one book per month. I didn't get around to posting last month because of holidays and 30 Days Wild so this is for two months. In May I managed two books, as well as one I'm reading month by month. In June, I managed none! Oh well, I'm hoping to get back on track in July but, before I reveal my picks, here's what I read in May.

My first was Julie & Julia: my year of cooking dangerously. This is the true story of Julie Powell who sets out to cook, in one year, all of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. At the suggestion of her husband, Eric, she chronicles the year in a blog, which you can still read here.

I did enjoy the book but I think I enjoyed the film more. What was missing for me was how the film interweaves the life of Julia Child, why she learned to cook and how she came to write her cookery classic - or maybe I just missed Meryl Streep! The real Julie is much more acerbic than the Amy Adams' Julie too, though I did warm to her as the book went on. Instead, you get much more about the real Julie's life, her back story and her family and friends, cleverly interwoven with her experience of making particular recipes (though only a handful are mentioned). If you loved the film, read the book too as it will enrich what you saw.

Bomb by Sarah Mussi is the fourth of the books I've read which had been shortlisted for the Lancashire Book of the Year award and the best so far.

Genesis wakes up in a dark room to find herself strapped to a suicide bomb: she has become the latest victim and weapon of a terrorist group. As they send her on a journey through the tourist hotspots of the south of England, Gen must race against time to work out their intentions and try to save both herself and thousands of innocent people.

My heart pounded almost from the first page of this tense and exciting story. I loved how the plot and revelations gradually unfold as Gen pieces together what the terrorists are planning. Sarah Mussi won last year's award but wasn't lucky this time. The winner was Am I normal yet? by Holly Bourne.

As a reminder, this is the book I'm reading each month: Island: Diary of a Year on Easdale. It's the nature diary of Garth Waite (who does the writing) and his wife, Vicky (who does the illustrations). The illustrations are probably my favourite part even if this squirrel does look on the evil side!

And now for my July picks. Well, actually they were my June picks but I'm carrying them over! I've chosen a couple of lighter ones for the summer, both by authors I've read before. I was telling a colleague about When God was a Rabbit which I read in April and she's loaned me Sarah Winman's latest: hopefully it'll be just as good. The other is by the author of the Great Christmas Knit-Off which I also enjoyed.

Who knows, I might even read another. I've been scouring the local charity shops and have built up quite a pile so I've got plenty to choose from!

In case any of you are wondering how the grebes are getting along, the two babies are still doing well and growing fast. As you can see, they're almost too big to be hitching a ride now (though this is dad who is slightly smaller than mum).

More exciting news on the waterfront is that we also now have ducklings: seven of them :) This is the first and only brood of the year so far. Hopefully, there's still time for more.

I've also been watching the damsel and dragonflies. Despite the lake, they're not very common so it's been thrilling to see a lot of them milling around and laying eggs in the pondweed. As well as this blue-tailed damselfly, there were plentiful common blues. I also saw what I think was a keeled skimmer but could have been a black-tailed skimmer - the only difference is the black tail but I didn't get a photo and haven't been able to find them since. Either way, it's a new species for me!

Hope you've had a good weekend and have been able to enjoy some sunshine. x

Days 28-30: Grebes and wildflowers

The month has flown by and today marks the end of 30 Days Wild. I've enjoyed it so much and it's seemed much less onerous than last year. Maybe I was more relaxed about it or maybe more inspired? It definitely helped being on holiday for part of the month as I had more time to be creative.

Before I call it to a close though, I have the final three days to share.

Day 28: Three become two. I have sad news that one of the baby grebes has disappeared, apparently snatched by a gull. I have a feeling that the lake might not be as abundant in fish as needed as the chicks are increasingly being left alone as both parents search for food. Again and again they dive beneath the surface and come up empty. I'm keeping everything crossed that I'm wrong and the two remaining chicks survive :(

Day 29: A wildflower wasteland. One of my first posts when I started blogging 4 years ago was about the patch of wasteland I pass on my way to work which had been transformed into a pictorial meadow. Over the following years the grasses took over and the flowers gradually disappeared. Over the winter, the area was bulldozed and fenced off. It was a surprise then that I noticed some of the flowers were back. I'm thinking that the bulldozing churned up the ground and spread and reactivated the dormant seed. On my way home yesterday, I stopped to take a closer look: well, as close as you can get through a wire fence.

Day 30: Show your support. I wanted a way to mark the close of 30 Days Wild without it just fizzling out. In the end, it seemed fitting to thank the Wildlife Trusts for organising this initiative by becoming a member so I went online and signed up with Lancashire Wildlife Trust :) Can't wait to receive my membership pack and newsletter to find out what's going on in my local area.

Many thanks to the Wildlife Trusts and to all of you who've been following me through the month. Same time next year? x

Day 27: Make a rosemary wreath

Day 27 and time for something creative. While gardening yesterday, I'd pruned the rosemary bush and it seemed a shame to waste all the sprigs even though there are still plenty more.

I found this watering can in the garage when we moved in and it seemed the perfect place to store the sprigs while I decided what to do.

After a bit of deliberation I decided to make a wreath so, as soon as I arrived home this evening, I set to work. The hoop is an old metal coat hanger.

I used some garden wire to attach the rosemary sprigs around the hoop and used whatever else I could find to decorate it: alchemilla mollis, penstemon, lemon balm and clematis.

Ta-dah! I'm really pleased with it and, of course, my hands smelled amazing afterwards :)

I've also tried this idea which I saw in a magazine. The idea is that the heat from the candle releases the fragrance of the leaves. The jury is still out on this one: it looks pretty but, as I sit here sniffing the air, there's no hint of rosemary.

Last but not least, an update on the baby grebes. As you can see, they're still doing well and sticking close to mum :)

Day 26: Tend the garden

Day 26 and no time for anything special for 30 Days Wild as the garden needed some attention: weeding and dead-heading.

Hoverfly on geum

Rosemary beetle feeding, unsurprisingly, on my rosemary bush. I thought it was really pretty with its shiny blue and red stripes. Of course I then found out it's a pest!

The marsh (?) orchid is almost fully in bloom.

This cocoon was on the underside of a gooseberry leaf. Does anyone know what it is? I'm wondering if it might be the magpie moth I saw recently?

How do snails manage to scale the prickliest of plants? My fingers were stabbed several times just harvesting the berries.

And here's what I harvested, 1.1kg, and there are still more on the bush. It's been a really good harvest again this year.

Hawthorn shield bug

I suppose I should have tried to do something more exciting on the last weekend of the challenge. However, in some ways it's also fitting as it shows you don't have to go much further than your front door to enjoy nature :)