Looking up wharfedale

Looking up wharfedale, a photo by rajmarshall on Flickr.

We spent last week at Scargill house on a summer gardens week, trips to various gardens in the vicinity - Beth managed all those, I went on the Parcevall Hall and Japanese garden trip, and otherwise just rested with a couple of evening trips down to Kettlewell. The album of photos I took is on line.

Teaser Tuesday - 1st November

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

What must it be like to sleep on the wing, so trusting in the cushion of air to hold you up; so perfectly in your element that you are everywhere at home, with no fear of getting lost, no dread of arrival or pang of departure? Not like Leland, compulsively, obsessvely, restlessly searching, but sublimely free, sipping from the rain clouds, dining on the plankton of the skies.

Another teaser from Katherine Swift's The Morville Hours - here she's talking about the swift - an interesting coincidence - and Leland was an early book colllector (and collector of ex-monasteries under Henry VIII). I'm afraid this is a little late for Tuesday....

Teaser Tuesday - 18th October

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Despite the weather the wild daffodil buds are showing their first pale glimmer of colour. Their country name is the Lenten Lily, because they bloom in the liturgical season of Lent.

Spring approaches - at least in Katherine Swift's The Morville Hours! Another, like last week from our book group 'book of the month'.

Teaser Tuesday - 4 October

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

My mother used to take me on retreats to Dominican abbeys, and while she was at her prayers, I - a child of eight or nine - would roam about the grounds or help the lay brother in charge of the gardens as he weeded the paths or dug the vegetable patch.
Among the books I brought with me to Morville was my mother's Dominican prayer book, containing a modern text of the Hours.

Katherine Swift's The Morville Hours - here is the Guardian review - it is our book group book of the month - only got it last night - but it looks rather good the story of a house and gardens told through the medium of the book of Hours.

Stillness

DSCF8175
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Another week of working away - two books to read (or at least start) and I enjoyed the conjunction of these two passages:

I can remember, as quite a small boy, lying beneath a huge chestnut tree and staring up into its branches, wondering at its nascent fruitfulness, and resting not just under its presence but somehow within it. All this is part of the person I am, but, for the present, it is chiefly lost to me. I am much too busy....

from Stephen Cottrell's DO nothing to change your life.

Gardening is harder labour than Jacob is used to, and yet, he admits to himself, I enjoy it. His tired eyes are rested by the living green; rosefinches pluck worms from the ramped-up earth; and a black-masked bunting, whose song sounds like clinking cutlery, watches from the empty cistern

from David Michell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

The picture is another from Buxton's Pavilion Gardens - anyone want to name the plant?

In the Pavilion Gardens conservatory

In the Pavilion Gardens conservatory
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

We had a trip to Buxton today and I spotted this hothouse flower in the conservatory of the Pavilion Gardens.