Gardening Weekend

Wonderful weather here again and we were out and about in our lovely cottage garden, improving. The first pics are of our improvements to the place. We have planted the blueberry, apricot, and rassberries out the back. We made two new flower beds also out the back and of course the veggie patch.

Out the front we have added number of flowering plants including jasmanie, broom and of course we already had the sweet peas going, there about to burst into bloom.



The next pics are of blossoms around our house and about the village.

Kirtling Towers

Excellent gardens to be visited and visit we did. Sunday saw us at the Kirtling Towers. The home of Lord and Lady Fairhaven, who are nice enough to open to the public in the blossom season. They have a great garden as you will see from the pics, as well as excellent landscaping courtesy of history as well as design.

A little history of the place.....

What we know today as Kirtling Tower was built as the gatehouse to Kirtling Hall in the 1530s by Edward North. However, the history of the site goes back much further. The first documents refer to Kirtling castle in 1219. Later references indicate that it had a moat crossed by a bridge in 1260 and an encircling ditch and palisade in 1310.

In 1337 it was described as a ‘forcelet’ suggesting that it did not have stone defences and keep. The wall was repaired in 1392. The only buildings recorded before 1400 were ‘ruined and wasted houses’.

The castle was lived in at various times during the 13th and 14th Centuries. In the early 15th Century it included hall, kitchen and chapel and a ‘longhouse’ outside the moat. In 1424 a new hall was built inside the moat for the earl of Warwick by a carpenter from Saxon Street using 100 oaks and 10 ashes from Kirtling park. The architect’s specification included a parlour, solar and two chambers at the east end and a pantry, buttery and a passage leading to a kitchen. By then there were several other buildings within the moat. In 1528 Robert Brown kept the use of the parlour and two chambers, but rented out the rest of the house to a man from Little Bradley. (from http://www.kirtlingandupend.org.uk)

They have a wonderful selection of tulips,




Along with the lovely flowers there are two churches, the orignal towers, a secret garden, several ponds, horses and various other old buildings. Only two sides of the moat are now filled with water though.



A few other pics around the place....

Wellie Wanging

Yes its true, wellies are not just useful for all the mud here but on Easter Monday they throw then around the pub.

Thank You

Thank You to everybody that has sent lovely things for the baby. We are very luck. We now have so many blanks, toys, clothes all manner of other stuff we will be setting up our own baby shop. Here are some of the lovely gifts.....

Cambridge in Bloom

It is beautiful here, sunny days with tops of 18. We are enjoying the new arrives, such as little duckies pictured below as well as all the wonderful flowers. We took these pictures on our way to Kings College for a performance of St John Passion. A brillent piece if a tad long, over and hour.



Here are a few pics from our own garden....

Our Anniversary

We did the same old, but then why brake a tradition that is fantasic. Ben and I have been together now for eight years. This year is our sixth wedding anniversary. Now of course we wern't going to find a RockPool around Cambridge but what we did find was pretty darn good. We dinned at the Pink Geranium, which was about a twenty minute drive from our place in a village called Melbourn. The food was excellent, I had a heaven lamb dish and Ben had duckie. Delicious! The restaurant was surrounded by a lovely garden and we were treated to snacks between courses and took drinkies in the palour before going to our table.

It was a very magical night as all the others have been, here a few pics of the event.




And here is us six years ago.....