A FEAST FOR THE HEART AND SOUL !

Well you all know how we spent the first week, if you read the earlier post but now for the second week.

We'd book a few days away to stop us spending the whole of our holiday working on the house and garden. The first week we were off was glorious warm/hot weather but of course the second week turned out to be the week that Humberto was arriving across the UK! for those who don't know , Humberto was the storm that had hit Bermuda causing lots of damage. It's much weaker by the time it hits the UK but they were forecasting torrential rain for our second week.

But we are British ! So we know all about being battered by wind and rain at the seaside! Undeterred we set off on Tuesday for our holiday cottage, planning to visit a garden on our way there.

I've picked a couple of photos which I think show you what a wonderful place it was. Our first place we visited on Tuesday was Sissinghurst Castle and Gardens, it was the home of Vita Sackville -West and Harold Nicolson. Harold was a writer and diplomat and Vita a poet, novelist and gardener.
The property is now run by the National Trust and is well worth a visit if you are a gardener or love gardens.

There are beautiful Tudor buildings and beautiful garden rooms all around. I will be adding all the photos from my visits to my garden blog over the next few days, so if you'd like to see the wonderful garden and plants please visit there, the link is on the side bar.

We were very good and only bought two plants and two packets of spring bulbs, yes I do know a small miracle !

You can see that we did not encounter any of the forecast ed rain while we wandered these wonderful gardens.

We carried on to our holiday cottage , which was just outside Rye.

It was built in the 1760 and was lovely and cosy with beamed ceilings and a large inglenook fireplace.

 It sat in a lovely large garden and was side on to the road, so the front window looked out onto the thatched roof of the cottage next door!.
The rain arrived once we were settled in the cottage ,so no worries there.

So Wednesday we visited Rye, which is a lovely town , with some beautiful old buildings, we're stayed near Rye before, so just called in for a look round the shops and to pick up something tasty for dinner. There was a show or two but nothing to speak of , the skies clearing between the light rain.

We then went to visit another wonderful garden, this one we'd visited before so knew we would be in for a treat.

Great Dixter , the gardens designed by the Late Christopher Lloyd. This is a view of part of the long border with the house behind.

The rest of the long border. This garden is just crammed with wonderful bright flowers and shrubs. Again I will put my photos for this garden on the garden blog.

While we visited this garden it did rain on and off mostly quite light and not for long but there was a longer burst of heavy rain but we were able to sit it out under a covered seating area in the garden.

It all the gardens we visited there were covered area's for sitting or dinning and these were very interesting to us because we want to cover over our sofa area on the patio and are trying to decide what we will use to achieve the best result for what we want.

At Great Dixter we did leave with a couple of boxes of plants for the garden.... well you knew it couldn't last!
Then back to The cottage for dinner and a evening of ideas and plans for the garden. While at Great Dixter and walking the long border and then round the other parts of the garden I told Paul that I was now planning Little Deester!  The dogs have ruined the grass in my flower garden and for some time I had been considering removing the grass in favour of increasing the borders to try and achieve the wonderful full dense beds of flowers that they achieve in these gardens. So that will be my quest for next year!.
So Thursday it was time to head home but we had two more places to visit on our way back.

When we arrived at this National trust property the Car park attendant's word were " The house opens at eleven , the gardens open but you won't want to go there ,the barn tearooms is on the left "
You can see that the gardens are nice however he's words were because the heavens had opened and it was chucking it down by the bucket load ! We parked and sat for a while and the rain calmed , so we made our way to the Barn tearooms where we enjoyed a lovely tea and flapjack for me and a coffee and slice of fruit cake for Paul.
We were ready to go just as the clock struck 11, so made our way to the house, it had now stopped raining.

I could not wait to visit this house because it is an Arts and Crafts house where the rooms and hallways are decorated in William Morris wallpapers, fabric and carpets ! Plus they were having a display about William Morris !

The place, Standen House , was full of wonderful wallpaper, curtains, cushions, etc all William  Morris . Well you may not know..... ;) but I'm rather partial to a William Morris pattern myself!! Lol
We'd even settled on a wallpaper for the dining area of our kitchen/breakfast/dinning room that matches the tiles and blind we are buying just before we came away for our short break.

So this was just a feast for the soul seeing all the WM patterns on walls, windows , everywhere !

They had even turned one of the rooms over to represent a William Morris shop!

The house was designed by Philip Webb and built 1892 to 1894 and It was built for the Beale's family and stayed in their ownership until passed over to the National Trust in the 1970's. Because of this the house is unchanged from what the family asked Phillip Webb to design and most of the furnishings etc are the originals.

I took lots of photos of the house and the garden which I will share in a separate post on here for anyone who'd like to see them.

And even better this house is ten minutes from where my daughter and granddaughter live! So we'll be able to visit it again , they dress the house for a 1920's Christmas in the winter, so I will be aiming to visit again this year to see that.
Our final visit was of course to our daughter and granddaughter ! Then in the evening we headed home full of gardening plans, decorating plans, well in truth full of love for life and all the beautiful things it can hold.

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