Stormy Weather

[marthe]

Wow, Mercia! Spoiled for choice on the flickr site! saly: here's an interesting garden in Washington D.C. at Dumbarton Oaks www.doaks.org/gardens/. It was a private garden until 1940, when the owners gave their house, art collection, and surrounding property to Harvard for use as a research centre for Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art. Some land went to the U.S. government and the city of Washington D.C. In the 1920s, Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss asked Beatrix Jones Farrand to design the gardens and landscape of DO. Farrand was a neice of the writer Edith Wharton and was one of the first women to become a professional landscape architect and member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. She got her professional training under the direction of Charles Sprague Sargent at the Arnold Arboretum!

I've got a few more gardens up my sleeve, but wonder if we shouldn't make the garden tours into a thread of its own so that we don't hijack stormy weather! To stay on topic: it's April showers here all week!

[doversoul1]

marthe
Is this that Dumbarton Oaks (re: Stravinsky)?

This is my local garden (well, almost). For the photographs, scroll down a little.

http://www.invectis.co.uk/sissing/

More information here

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-sissinghurst-castle/

[salymap]

Marthe We could start a thread called 'Homes and Gardens.....NOT the magazine'or some such, as long as our general chat,including our gardens, stays where it is. What do others think?

[marthe]

doversoul: Yes this is The Dumbarton Oaks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert...Dumbarton_Oaks) .

I like your local garen! It's on my list of gardens to see. In fact, just this evening an English friend was telling me about a visit to Sissinghurst during her most recent visit home (about 4 years ago.) She said that the gardens were lovely but the food at the restaurant was dreadful (a charred sausage or something). According to Adam Nicolson's recent book about Sissinghurst, his wife Sarah Raven is supposed to have revamped the entire menu using veg grown at Sissinghurst. Anyway, your photos are delightful.

[marthe]

Marthe We could start a thread called 'Homes and Gardens.....NOT the magazine'or some such, as long as our general chat,including our gardens, stays where it is. What do others think?

Very good idea saly. Let's see what others and FF have to say. We could just devote the new thread to armchair garden tours and leave the chit-chat about weather, one's own garden, etc. on the stormy weather thread. I love the exchange of virtual garden tours but don't want to have it take over a thread in which others might want to talk about something else.

[salymap]

Good Morning As someone said above, rain and high winds abound in the SE/Kent. If ff sees this perhaps she would give her opinion on a separate thread for virtual garden tours. It would, of course, be less connected with music even than Stormy Weather, but would still bring in the punters IMO. [Where do I pick up these awful expressions?}

[salymap]

Just for the record I've sent a PM to ff re the House and Gardens on a separate thread. saly

[salymap]

ff agrees to it and sensibly says it should have a short title that will appear in the heading. It might attract some guests to join if they are interested. Is 'virtual gardens' clear or rather offputting? Any ideas?

[marthe]

Good work saly! I'm glad ff agrees. Shall we try with 'Virtual Gardens' or 'Virtual Garden Tour' and see what happens?

[salymap]

It's on Platform 3 under VIRTUAL GARDENS but don't like to worry ff to move existing posts to new home. Please get it going if you have any more ideas for it, move existing posts if you are clever enough.

over and out. saly

[marthe]

Thank you saly! I hope others will join in with the Virtual Garden 'magical mystery tour'! Meanwhile, weather for ducks here. Rain today, tomorrow, the next day until the weekend. Good for the garden, the water table, ponds, reservoirs etc. Still, garden tours must go on, 'weather' or not. Yesterday I went with a gardening group to a compost farm where they make wonderful compost from all manner of organic waste: zoo droppings, stable muck, fish waste, leaves, sea weed etc. This is all turned into thousands of cubic yards of 'black gold'! Here's the site: www.earthcarefarm.com/index.htm This afternoon, I'll be going on a garden history tour of a local estate where the head gardener uses organic gardening methods.

[salymap]

Thanks a lot marthe. Someone kept me talking at the front door today and the wind blew into my house from due East and it was freezing.

I shall indoors and read what others post.

[marthe]

saly, Brrr...keep that east wind out. That's what we've got here, a chill east wind bringing rain and drizzle. I need to sign off for a while to get some work done. Hope you've warmed up a bit.

[BBMmk2]

Rain today!! bah!

[salymap]

Morning from your resident insomniac. I wish I could sleep through the night but by 1 am I long for a cup of tea. Like many people of all ages, I am given lots of tablets to swallow by my doctor, and only tea will help my dry mouth and thirst at this hour.

Of course, many MBers haven't been to bed by 1am. At least this site caters for all with opening hours.

Sleep well, lucky people. How many hours'sleep do you need?