Greygirl goes North (east)

Sometimes it's necessary to let more light into the garden and open it up a little.  Leave the den and sniff the air elsewhere.

Elsewhere the air was salty, with that edge-of-earth feeling, like you are close to a freedom of sorts.
The north east coast.

There were hedges along the roads stuffed full with wild honeysuckle and brambles, great green and yellow fields of crops stretching for miles beyond, red stone buildings and a blue strip of the North sea never far away. 

An abundance of wild flowers to jog the memory and shake out the names you used to know.

Ragwort, red valerian, common mallow, coltsfoot, rosebay willow herb, bladder campion, toadflax, pink fog grass.

ivy-leaved Toadflax

red Valerian

Sea air is a superb sleeping draught - never mind the balms, the herbal teas, Chopin, The Shipping Forecast, prescription drugs.

I don't care how early I wake up after sleeping at night, in a bed, knowing I have slept is enough, and that for a while at least I shut down and switched off. The insomniac's holy grail.

At 4.30 am the telegraph wires were full of swifts chatting noisily with eachother, coming and going quickly, and a team of acrobatic sparrows bouncing in the pampas grass after the seeds.

The early bleatings of nearby sheep every now and again, then a gull would call, to remind you where you are.

In my mind's eye one tiny village is framed simply as a blue house hung with bunting against a blue sky.

cottage at Craster

 

 

Gertrude Jekyll's Garden

 Gertrude Jekyll's garden at Lindisfarne Castle was bright as a painter's palette with great splodges of orange, yellows, pinks and blue.  A vast bed of cornflowers edged with the silvery-grey of Lambs Ears.  Hot pink mallow, cosmos, white daisies and anenomes.

Blood-red hollyhocks and a darker, poisonous-looking one, great trees of bronze fennel.

 

It was good to see there is now a stone plaque inside the garden commemorating old Gertrude...a raven would be a nice nod to Lutyens.

In the garden all the plant supports were made from hazel or birch branches - most dripping with sweet peas of bright reds and purples.

On Lindisfarne there was no sea mist this time, everything looked sharp and clear.  The warm air was humid and the sun hot.  The kind of day when all the signs are that it is summer - really and truly. 

I have more to share from this garden and Alnwick also...watch this space...

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