Thursday 26 July 2012

Impulse!!

Do any of us do much on impulse?

I did last night.  I went outside at about 11pm to shut the chickens away for the night, the house has been really quite stuffy and the night air was cool and inviting; so inviting that I decided to sleep outside!   The garden chairs were all still out with cushions on so I took a blanket and got comfy in 2 chairs.  The night sky was really visible it was like soft crushed velvet with glitter sprinkled all over it.  In fact it was so mesmerising that it was hard to sleep.  I woke at one point and saw a shooting star - what are the chances of that?

Socx came out in the night and found me in the garden so got comfy in a chair next to me and then Maia followed; she slept by my feet.

By about 4:30am the light was changing the colour of the sky and it was cold and damp, so I retired indoors.  It was such an adventure and I am still smiling about it now.  I watched the earth rotate against the stars, the garden was peaceful and safe - what fun!!  Well my idea of fun...

Saturday 14 July 2012

Chesterfield, July 2012

We have just spend a week in the Peak District in our first Homelink 'house swap'.  We stayed in a beautiful bungalow about 8 miles from Chatsworth House.  We were really pleased to find that we were only 50 miles south of Leeds, so on 2 days we drove up to see Ellie.



On Wednesday we visited the Royal Armouries Museum, quite interesting for David but I just tried to find a chair to go to sleep in for most of the time.

We were really late home Wednesday evening and slept rather late the next day!

Looking through the waterfall at the Tropical Park




When we went to Leeds on Thursday we visited a Tropical Park, which had a butterfly house and a meerkat family.  It was a most suprising place with lots of different climates zones and we really liked it and recommended it to Ellie.   That evening we had a Japanese 'wasabi' meal which is good fun and most entertaining. It was just lovely to see Ellie and catch up with her new job news.........  I think David might have to SKYPE her each week for an update. 





We have been remarkably lucky with the weather, when it was raining we were indoors in a museum or country house and when we wanted to walk around the gardens we only had 1 or 2 drizzles.  Our visit to Chatsworth House on Saturday was wonderful.  


We estimate is must be 18 years since we last visited the house and it has been updated and restored very well.  Mind you I do find walking slowly around a big house makes my legs tired, so our trip around the gardens did involve a lot of sitting and admiring the views!!  LOL










Please can I have one of these for Xmas - only a solid silver incense burner about 2ft high.



This is my favourite statue in the Chatsworth Collection, she is lovely












Yes we were sitting in the sun!


I love the 'rockery' in the garden - more like boulders really and much bigger than a house!!  Bit too big for my garden.