six on Saturday, 30 March 2024
A couple of weeks ago I posted some photos of wildflowers blooming in the garden and noted that others were on their way. Today's short post contains some of those others. For participation guidelines for joining this Saturday sharing of six things going on in our gardens, see Jim Stephens’ Garden Ruminations, the gathering point …
English Gardenscapes with Shades of Roman Britain Tour Note 5: The Roman Baths and Bath Abbey
The feature photo for this set of notes comes from neither Roman Bath nor even late medieval Bath. “Oh! Who can be ever tired of Bath?” dates from 19th-century Regency Bath and Jane Austen's delightful send up of Bath's social primacy and gothic novels' popularity, Northanger Abbey. I recommend it to anyone who likes satire …
Wordless Wednesday, 27 March 2024
English Gardenscapes with Shades of Roman Britain Tour Note 4: Hever and Sudeley Castles and Gardens
From the Romans to the Tudors for this next set of notes, but I'll return to the Romans in Bath for the next installment. This post, though, includes castles and gardens related to two wives of Henry VIII. We chose these sites in part for their historical connections but in large because there are features …
six on Saturday, 16 March 2024
The wildflowers are coming up! Six of the most prolific here in the garden at Highland Lake, Alabama, are my subjects this week. 1. The first is my favorite---rue anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides ), a native, woodland perennial. Wonderfully delicate, and really rather tiny, it is easily overlooked among winter's left-over leaves and pine needles. To illustrate …
six on Saturday, 9 March 2024
1. I'll begin this week's six, which is mostly images, with one of those shrubs that typically announces the beginning of spring: forsythia. There are several forsythia bushes throughout the garden, but none of them blooming quite so vigorously as they have in the past. 2. The Lenten Roses or hellebores (Helleborus spp.), too, are …
Wordless Wednesday, 6 March 2024
six on Saturday, 2 March 2024
I realized today as I sat down to post a quick Six on Saturday that I haven't posted one in 2024! My focus has been on writing a series of guides for a tour of English gardens and Roman sites I'm leading with a colleague in June. Also, the weather here in Blount County Alabama …
English Gardenscapes with Shades of Roman Britain Tour Note 3: Mamucium, Chedworth, Chesters, and Hadrian’s Wall
Depending on an on-time arrival in Manchester, our English garden and villa tour will begin appropriately with the Mamucium Roman Fort and Gardens Reconstruction. The key word here, however, is reconstruction. It is a site I am not familiar with, so I’ll simply note that Manucium, now a part of an Urban Historical Park, dates …
After Eden 