Days out in June

June 1 - 21

I see from my Calendar that the first part of June was very busy, and the last part was much worse!

We seemed to spend a lot of time slaving in my elder son's house and garden - particularly the garden, which had got completely out of hand. We chopped and slashed and bagged, and made umpteen trips to the dump with garden rubbish and other assorted rubbish. We also helped my sister with her house move. I can never understand why so any people leave their ovens in such a disgusting state - the number of other people's ovens I've cleaned, you'd think it would be fair if I came across one which was clean already, but I never seem to. The oven of the place to which she has moved needed a lot of Oven Pride and scrubbing.

In between all this, we did manage two days out. One was to Standen again, where we visited last Year. This time, we went with friends and it was a bit warmer. We had a very good pub lunch first, then a long walk in the woods around Standen. After that, we wandered round the gardens. Although it was quite late in June, the rhododendrons were lovely, and it's really hard to choose just one photograph, they were all so beautiful.



This is a part of the garden I photographed last time - but this time, it's full of flowers!

It was nice to go round the house again and appreciate things I had not looked at carefully last time - like this portrait of Mrs Beale, wife of the London solicitor for whom Phillip Webb designed the house.


The house is just full of William Morris patterns and beautiful William de Morgan ceramics, many of which I longed to take home, and all of which I have unaccountably failed to photograph. There was even a little May Morris exhibition, which I also failed to photograph. I often marvel afterwards, when I look at my photos, at how many things I didn't photograph and should have done, especially when I see the things I did photograph.

I did take some photos in the kitchen. The huge old range is too dark to see properly in the photo, but I did also like this old built in dresser - probably the very latest thing when the house was built.



Although, as usual we had stayed until the place was closing, I did have time to buy the cushions I failed to buy last time I was there. So now I have two cushions on my bed which match the bedroom curtains - much to Paul's disgust, he flings them onto the floor before he gets into bed every night!

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