Tag: gravelled drive

Focus On The Back Drive

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While Jackie continued her creative magic in the garden, and between televised tennis sessions, I wandered around admiring the fruits of her labours, and, of course photographing them.

Day lilyDay liliesLilies

We have a number of different day lilies;

Water Lily

and the first water lily has now bloomed on the tiny cistern pond.

Ast

An astilbe thrives in the shady western bed.

Rose Penny Lane

In the Rose Garden Penny Lane adorns the potting shed,

Beetles on Margaret Merrill

And Margaret Merrill hosts a miniature beetle drive.

Back Drive barrier with robin

Looking through the Back Drive barrier towards the Rose Garden, I noticed a robin perched on the mid-way arch.

Robin

It flitted off, so I stalked it for a while.

Back drive 7

The barrier provides a floral frame for the drive,

Back drive 1

Back drive 2

Back drive 4Back drive 3

Back drive 6

which is now bordered by full length planting.

Poppy 1Poppy 2

Poppies,

Snapdragons

snapdragons,

Achillea and snapdragons

and achillea, are just a few examples.

Back drive 8

Naturally there are also hanging baskets, better lit in the afternoon.

This evening we dined on fried eggs, bacon, tomatoes, and mushrooms; baked beans and toast. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Gilbert & Gaillard Châteauneuf du Pape 2014. Well, why not?

The Foam Rubber Mattress

Back drive

Aaron brought a friend with him this morning, to help him spread the shingle on the back drive. In two hours they neatly laid four tons of material. That they didn’t cover the full extent of the drive was simply because there was not enough gravel. I will need to buy some more.

This afternoon I scanned a batch of colour slides from November 1972. I have not been looking forward to reaching this stage in my archives. This is because two months earlier Jackie and I had, devastatingly, parted. After we each had led rather different lives, it was to be 37 years before we were reunited.

After spending some time with friends Tony and Madeleine, I was given a room in the flat of a work colleague in Blackheath. It was a large room and could accommodate a thick piece of foam rubber measuring 6’6″ x 5’6″ that I had tailor made so that Michael, Matthew, and Becky could share it with me at the weekends. That makeshift mattress was to serve for another 34 years. When I set up home with Jessica I had a wooden bed built around it. Only when I left Lindum House and returned to London, where it was too large to fit into the Hyde Park Square flat, was it replaced.

I was to be even more grateful for the Blackheath room and that mattress before I moved on, because for period of six weeks I suffered my one and only bout of bronchitis and hardly left it for a month.

Matthew on donkey 11.72

Matthew and Becky 11.72Becky 11.72 002Becky 11.72 003

During the time at Blackheath the children and I visited that village where donkey rides and Guinness were sampled.

Greenwich waterfront 11.72 001

Sometimes we went down to the Thames waterfront at Greenwich, which would be unrecognisable today. Smoke still billowed from Battersea Power Station and cranes were still in service.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s scrumptious chilli con carne (recipe) and egg fried rice (recipe). She drank sparkling water and I drank Seashore Isla Negra merlot 2014.