Visiting Rousham

For three years, my daughter and I have promised ourselves a trip to see the gardens at Rousham, and last week we had the opportunity and the good weather, so off we went. We drove through the archway above into the car park, after driving through the Oxfordshire countryside and Costwold stone villages which looked their best in the spring sunshine.

We walked back through the passageway to the ticket machine and to pick up a guide leaflet.

The ceiling was beautifully vaulted in the mellow golden stone.

A grand house it is at Rousham, not normally open to the public.

Within rolling parkland, the house has a manicured "island" providing sheltered spots for planting.

There are many niches containing statuary of a classical nature.

We saw mysterious doors leading who-knows-where,

plenty of architectural detail

until, having walked some way around the house

We came to a gap in the well-trimmed yew hedge and

A glorious ornate iron gate which led into a large walled garden.

We walked under the pergola

And enjoyed the water music of the fountain playing in the pond.

There were views of a dovecote

and a church spire from the path by the fruit trees.

It was early in the season but, here and there, were lovely spring flowering bulbs, like these muscari, or grape hyacynths.

Whoever designed this garden liked to frame views.

Luscious hosta leaves seemed untouched by slugs.

Steps with primroses led up to a higher level.

In the next garden area were furry-budded magnolia trees

and paper bark maple trees.

This seemed a highly desirable and picturesque residence for doves, as well as a useful source of guano as a natural fertilizer.

The knot garden was well-kept but, as yet, a little bare.

More doves viewed the estate from the weather vane on the main house roof.

Another view of the pergola, with a flowering ribes in the foreground.

There was a row of auriculae sheltering on the windowsill of the potting shed

and some pretty pots of tulips by the greenhouse.

An obelisque/odalisque led the way to another part of the gardens

dotted with more statuary

beautiful still-bare trees towering above the river

and a path divided by a rill

leading to a pond overlooked by a grotto

and then on to a stone arcade

with places to sit and enjoy the sylvan views under more vaulted roofing.

Mercury showed off his balancing skills.

This long-horned cow escorted us back around the house on the other side of the haha.

There was an intriguing staircase leading upwards

and a gatehouse resplendent with its own knot garden and some extremely elegant chimneys.

On this Thursday afternoon we nearly had the place to ourselves, enjoying the birdsong, fresh air and sunshine as well as the specific delights of Rousham itself. I'm so glad we got there at last.

Breathing Space in London

Some of my work is on exhibition in London today!

 

Here is the lovely Emily Wyatt and some members of the Yeo Dance Company, who will be performing at the Mermaid Theatre this afternoon and wearing costumes designed by me and made by me with the assistance of a dozen volunteer stitchers. This project has taken over my life for the past six weeks. More photos of the costumes can be found here. Now I have a breathing space of my own, in the magic armchair with my knitting, as I plan my next creative escapade.

Hellebores

 

 

 

Aren't these lovely? Our local nursery is running their own breeding programme for Lenten Roses and had these gorgeous blooms on display yesterday when we visited. Spoilt for choice, we actually brought home some hollyhocks, a lupin and two camellias (one white, one red, to join the pink one currently delighting us in our garden). However, the hellebores are very seductive and I may yet succumb to a few

Change and Progress

I have been a very remiss blogger recently. However, here is one of the things that has been keeping me occupied: the long-overdue redecoration and refurbishment of our living room. It is a long way from finished, but I thought I'd reveal how far we've got in the process.

The living room is the largest in our 60s chalet bungalow. It overlooks the back garden and is south facing. Visitors have, over the years, been witness to squareas of paint on the walls as we auditioned various possibilities while living with the increasingly worn and grubby buff or magnolia walls and cream beige carpet we'd inherited when we moved in. We could no longer ignore that the carpet pile had worn down to the backing, and the underlay in heavy traffic areas had totally disintegrated. The time had come to bite the bullet, reconsider our options and get on with it.

This is not quite a "before" collage, but shows the room in January, when we had removed the carpet to the dump and started filling the cracks and imperfections on the walls.

We had previously made some choices: we replaced the dominating stone fireplace with something more compact and modern, with a lovely slate hearth. We had also purchased some Anaglypta Fibretex wallpaper, as I fancied grass paper but decided that this was a good, tough textiley alternative (it is no longer available under this brand as far as I can tell, but googling glass fibre wallcoverings will come up with similar, if not identical, products). At the same time,we had scrim-taped the cracks in the ceiling between plasterboards, then papered with a textured paper and painted it in a silk finish white paint to try to reflect more light into the room. At that point, the process ground to a halt for whatever forgotten reasons were relevant at the time and we procrastinated once again.

Spending a lot of time in this room (home of the Magic Armchair, indeed), I felt the combination of patterned paper on the ceiling with patterned "paper" on the walls would be too much texture, and the textured ceiling married to the paint finish created an oppressive surface.

Now, we decided to strip the ceiling and repaper with a thick, plain lining paper before painting it with the Dulux Light and Space paint in white. We took advantage of the sales to order some leather seating in navy and an axminster carpet in a lovely colour named "Clay Pot". A number of tester pots in shades of creaminess later, we fixed on a warm pinky-yellowish shade of Light and Space called Sun Swirl. Flu and a bad back made us see the sense of getting someone in to do the paper stripping and hanging, which was done over five days by the lovely Bernie. Then came half term (and a trip to London).

We just managed to complete all the painting before the men came yesterday to lay the carpet, and today we had oak doors fitted (which will be oiled to match the finish of the mirror on the chimney breast). These replace the flush panel original doors of the house, which were much battered and cracked by misuse (slamming).

This weekend will hopefully see (apart from some much-needed relaxation and recuperation) the installation of new lighting and playing with the layout of various key pieces of furniture as we do not expect the seating for about another month to six weeks or so. We are also awaiting delivery of a roman blind rail before we can install the curtain rail we have in readiness for the curtains I will make after other, more pressing, sewing projects, and we need to look out for some storage furniture and lamp tables and some art pieces for the walls.

I also need to do a very large amount of sewing (which is another story) and also investigate bathroom fittings, thanks to a leaky loo and its consequences. Never a dull moment!

Farewell, 2008

Another year has rushed by, a new one hovers just over the horizon. It's fascinating to see and read evaluations of the year in blogland. I'm not going to do that here. Instead, I'm sharing my photos of a recent sunset, which seems quite appropriate for today.

I wish you all a very happy, healthy, creative and contented 2009.

Happy Christmas and a Joyful New Year

Oh, dear. Six weeks have passed since I last took you travelling with me in the magic armchair. The armchair has been languishing because I've been tucked up in bed for a lot of the time, in the company of a couple of fluey bugs which have made the tail end of 2008 rather miserable. I'm hopeful that now this episode is over and I can start anew with 2009, with careful pacing, being more productive and having some fun. I am grateful that 2008 has given me opportunities to visit some wonderful places and meet treasured friends as well as rise to new challenges. We may be in an economic recession, but I am rich in the things that matter, for which I am grateful.

A Week in Essaouira - 3: Doors 2

Many doorways have doors-within-doors, as above and below.

My husband told me that this was the door into the women's mosque but, as a non-moslem, entry was still forbidden to me.

Lovely carved plasterwork (gep) above blue and white tiles and studded blue door.

A door to a shop or a workshop, close to the ancient ramparts - matched by my son's t-shirt!

Another beautiful pair we stumbled upon in the maze of medina streets.

The entrance to the artisanal school and workshops by the Bab (Gate) Marrakesh.

And a lovely defunct doorway arch in an alleyway by the old (pink) medina walls, beside the Villa Maroc.

A Week in Essaouira - 2: Doors 1

Essaouira is a town of white and blue. Doorways often feature these colours, though not invariably....

A coastal town, it's buffeted by the Atlantic winds and this results in wonderfully weathered paintwork - although the door owners might not agree with the wonderful...

The streets are quite easy to navigate as Essaouira as we now know it was built on the European grid system, but the town maintains a certain mystery, secrets behind its doors.

There's something so organic about the colours. They echo the colour of sky and cloud, of sea and foam.




You never know what lies around the corner, let alone behind the doors.

The lovely zellige tiling is less commonly seen in Essaouira than in the Cinnamon City, Marrakesh, but still it exists here and there.

A Week in Essaouira - 1

The door to Dar Zette

After the wet and grey summer in England (and Wales, where we spent a fortnight) we were feeling very sun-deprived. We decided to push out the boat and have another break away from home, hoping to boost our vitamin D in preparation for the winter. A new flight route between Bristol and Marrakech made Morocco an easier possibility, and some research turned up a lovely and available villa, Dar Zette. Essaouira appealed because it is on the coast, it has the reputation for being more laid-back than Marrakech, and without the pushiness and mopeds in the souks, and because my blogging friend Elizabeth loves it there, and she has wonderful taste.

We actually took the very first flight to Marrakech from Bristol, and there were celebrations: Ryanair had provided Morrocan pastries and hors d'eouvres by the check in desks (sadly with no gluten-free options) and also belly dancers, whose music we heard as we queued for security but regrettably otherwise missed. I'm not sure that we were really expected when we arrived at the other end, as traffic control required us to circle the city some six or so times before we were allowed to land. This was actually quite interesting as I was beginning to find inspiration in the patterns on the dessert and the cultivated areas of land, and was about to request my camera from the overhead locker when we were given clearance and a slot. The first passengers off the plane were filmed for local television so maybe the cameraman was delayed getting to the airport.... The air was pleasantly warm as we stepped out of the plane and onto Moroccan soil.

Anyway, we were there and all went smoothly if slowly. I had wheelchair assistance at the airport and was whizzed through passport control but then was parked for about three quarters of an hour while the rest of the family made their way through the queues at immigration/passport control. Eventually we were reunited and we found our driver for the journey to the coast.

The drive takes about two and a half to three hours, through a slowly changing landscape. The city gives way to the garden centres of the suburbs and then to red-soiled land punctuated by farms, settlements and little towns, trees and earth-built walls, the odd berber tent and goats. Eventually the earth began to turn paler with flecks of white. We stopped for a comfort break in a small town whose name I never discovered, and a bite to eat (most welcome, after breakfast at 4 a.m.), Then on, through roadworks due to an upgrading of the road surface, and pausing at a viewpoint to admire the lovely view over Essaouira and the sea. Essaouira reflected the colours of the locality: most buildings are white with blue paintwork, within the red medina walls. We arrived at Bab Marrakesh, to be met by Foued and fought over by two porters who wished to carry our baggage the short distance to the Dar. Foued sorted out this squabble and we were duly whisked along the street a short distance, to turn off the street into a covered alleyway and at the end stood the door to our home-for-a-week.

Moroccan houses contain secret treasures inside plain trappings, and Dar Zette was no different. The door opened through an arch into the courtyard, a quiet haven despite being only a few yards from one of the Medina's main streets. The white-painted walls, blue fountain, pretty central olive tree and warm terracotta floor tiles created a cool and calm atmosphere. We were welcomed by our maid, Sadir, and through Foued we arranged for her to cook us a tagine for dinner that evening. We were a little alarmed to be told that the water was cut off due to an explosion, but this turned out to be a mistranslation and there had been a burst water main, which cut off the water supply to all the town. We were assured that work was underway to restore the water, and meanwhile we had bottles of drinking water in the fridge.






So now all we had to to was to choose our bedrooms, settle in and make ourselves at home, explore and relax and look forward to eating the delicious tagine of chicken with lemons and olives being prepared for our delight.