Stratford-upon-Avon I

Stratford-upon-Avon--the home of Shakespeare.
Tudor-ish architecture.

Person freeing a pigeon caught in netting.
This took a long time and there was much applause at the end :).

Candy shop---note Shakespeare's visage on the bottles.

I was introduced to Liquorice allsorts this trip. Yum!

Shakespeare's birthplace. Big place--came from a wealthy family. His father, a glove-maker, was mayor at one time.

Stratford-upon-Avon II

Interior of Shakespeare's birthplace. [Not my photo--this is from the official guide. Photos were not allowed inside.] The bed, in which Shakespeare's parents would have slept, was about the size of a full bed. Shakespeare would have slept in a trundle bed to the side. The canopy would have been to keep the bugs, sticks, etc. falling out of the thatch roof off the bed. The tapestry design--paint on canvas not embroidered--was both lovely and historically correct.

Exterior of Shakespeare's birthplace.

Garden around the cottage. Gardens, gardens, gardens!

Herb borders. The roses would have been used for perfumes and food flavoring [rose water, granitas, rose-hip tea].

Hathaway Cottage II

Vegetable garden outside the back of the house. Not as extensive as it once probably was. Not as large as the flower portion and assuredly that would no have been the case in the late 1500s. Recognized lettuce, swiss chard, arugula? Some cukes not in this picture. If anyone can identify plants, feel free to weigh in :) Florida can be lush and green--but it always bears witness to the fact that some of the year it's a desert. England has it's own enchantingly lush greeness.



Borage, which I have grown. Beautiful blue flowers. Bees love them. Among other things growing them with your tomatoes are supposed to improve the flavor. You can read more about it here.

Love the huge, blue flowers. The size of humans. Delphiniums, delphiniums, delphiniums. Scattered with some poppies and other things I couldn't identify.

Hathaway Cottage I

Hathaway Cottage is where Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife grew up. [Note: this is not my picture, this is from the official guide.] Big, 12 room cottage. Family was very well off.

Again, not my photo-they wouldn't let you take pictures inside. But, this one was worth scanning in from the guidebook for two notable things. One, check out the floor timbers. Some of them were easily 20 inches wide. Big trees! Two, does anyone know the origination of the canopy bed? Well, it seems that insects, feces, small animals and various organic matters regularly fell through thatched roofs. Hence, a covering over your bed so that it did not rain down on you at night.



MY NEW FAVORITE THING IN THE WORLD. Some of the paths in the land around Hathaway's cottage were lined with Sweet Peas for sale. Tall as a person. Incredible smell that varied by variety--somewhat like Frangipani. Maybe 20? 30? Varieties in all. Amazing. Must try this winter. No fruit, but what a glorious scent.





A living Willow Arbor. Inside you could listen to sonnets, except when it rains a lot--as it just recently had. So, if you wanted to listen to a recitation of sonnets you had to go inside and inform the staff who would come out and read one for you. Neat!

Kew Gardens

Clematis! ID from Al :)

Lamb's ear.

My new fave, the Sweet Pea.

Some type of Rattlesnake Master.

Another unidentifed plant loved by bees [there's one center top of this picture].

Kew Gardens

Hosta [thanks Beth and Moira for the ID]

Huge lily--every bit of 6 feet tall. I think it's some type of Japanese lily.

Temple of Aeolus [God of the wind.]

Someone has left an offering!

As fragrant as a Star Gazer lily, but some other variant.

Some type of salvia. They're common in Florida, but I've not seen any this size or color range. Notice the huge bumblebee. This salvia variant was swarming with them--easily dozens. You can see another in the lower left of this picture.

Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens! Cephalaria gigantea 'giant scabious.' Odd name, lovely flower.

Some huge plant that I haven't been able to figure out what it is yet. It looks a little like elephant ear but the spikes look a little like a Coontie seed pod.

Late breaking news Moira IDs it : Gunnera tinctoria. Also known as Chilean Rhubarb. According to this post might even be edible.

How big? Moira takes a break.

Male torrent duck and chick. The ducks are native to South America.

A black peony. Gorgeous.

Kenilworth Castle IV

The Privy [private] Garden was a Tudor-style garden built explicitly for Elizabeth I and her retinue at Kenilworth Castle. Above is the design of the garden. In large part, it was intended to be a scent garden. At the time, it would have been hedged in for privacy.



View from Leicester's Building. On the fence posts--the white Bears with Staffs--were Leicester's heraldic symbol.



Knot 3 of the garden. The front border is Armeria maritima or ‘common thrift.’ [Okay, I'm having trouble with my keyboard and can't make double quotes anymore.] Lower right is dianthus, middle right is 'sweet rocket.' In the middle of the image are beds lined with strawberries. Very fragrant. The building in the back was the Aviary.

Something I thought was a carnation but is actually called Lychnis.



Clove-scented carnations [an array of scented flowers were sometimes referred to as gilly flowers]. This was a poor-man's scent substitute for actual, expensive cloves which nobles chewed to freshen their breath. [Karen Harper features this distinction in one of her Elizabethean murder mysteries.]



The Tudor Rose.


'At the culmination of the 100 year war, later to be known as the Battle of the Roses, Henry, of Lancastrian descent, defeated Richard the III at the Battle of Bosworth field in 1485 and thus gained the throne. Soon after the families reunited when Henry married Elizabeth of York and in respect of this Henry symbolically pasted together the red and white rose, the heraldic emblem we now recognise as the Tudor Rose.'

The Privy Garden plant list.

Kenilworth Castle III

The Great Hall, built by John of Gaunt between approx 1373 and 1380. This was the second major structure to be built at Kenilworth Castle.





You just don't see anything like this in the States. I should add there were throngs of uniformed school children, all nattering politely about what they were seeing. I felt as if I were in a Harry Potter movie.


What it would have looked like in its heyday. [taken from the official guidebook]


View from the back of The Great Keep, which would be the northernmost part of the compound. Much of this would have been underwater at the time--you can see the low lying areas. Kenilworth was known for it's water defences. I would guess this tower was every bit of 4 stories high.

Kenilworth Castle II

Leicester's Building, named for Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, and the last major structure built at the Kenilworth Castle Grounds [more on Kenilworth here] . This ENTIRE structure was built to host visits from Elizabeth I, whom Leicester hoped, unsuccessfully, to marry.



What the structure would have looked like upon completion. Taken from the official English Heritage guidebook.


A rendering of the Kenilworth compound from about 1575 [again from the official Guidebook]. Note the X. Most of the photos you will see following are from this part of the compound, to the east of the compound.

From the Privy Garden's [private gardens constructed for Elizabeth.] The would have had a privacy wall around originally.



The following are all more views of the eastern part of the compound.






To the right of the picture, looking upon the Great Hall.

Kenilworth Castle I

First stop, Kenilworth Castle. Anna and Rob try to sneak in the back way. Kidding, kidding. [Shown is Lunn's Tower, part of the outer fortifications.] Kenilworth is one of the largest ruined castles in the UK, and was a royal castle for most of it's history. It's considered one of the great historical sites of the UK.



Another view of Lunn's Tower. Love the textures.



View of the ruins from the main entrance. The castle--actually composed of three buildings--sits atop a sandstone hill. This allowed King John in the 13th century to build a dam creating a great lake that became part of the castle's defenses [good enough to withstand a major seige in 1266]. The low lying area to the left was all once water. In the fore right is part of Mortimer's Tower, one of the gatehouses and part of the stone defenses of the castle. Orignally, it would have stood two stories tall.


A painting of the castle as it would have appeared in 1620 [from a copy of a 17th century painting.] Notice the large lake, which was called a mere.



The main approach to the castle across the dam. Which was widened in the 1500s some time to become a 'tiltyard' or where they would have held jousting tournaments.



Close up of Mortimer's Tower.


Anna and Rob ponder adding a new stone feature to their garden.



The main castle grounds. On the left is the first building--The Keep--built in the 1120s [although the hill had long been used as a fortified high ground] by Geoffrey de Clinton. In the center back is The Great Hall built around 1373 by John of Guant. On the right is the most recent structure Leicester's Building, biult in 1571 for Elizabeth I and her servants to use as accommodations on her visits.

Rob & Anna & Tamworth

In London primarily for the Online Bingo Summit [whoohoo!] I was invited by my lovely friends and crack exhibition stand designers and builders Anna and Rob Laight to visit them and tour the Midlands. We left London Wed eve. after the stand broke down. Tamworth is a little over 2 hours [barring traffic] from London.



The morning started with a delicious breakfast of porridge looking out at Anna and Rob's lovely and immaculate garden. [Anna and Rob pictured.] The weather was absolutely smashing. Periodically sunny, 68 or so, breezy.



More of the lovely garden....




They have a really charming summer house, which I failed to get a good picture of. You'll see in this picture and the next blurry spots. I dropped my lens on the ground and didn't realize it wasn't completely dry. I was also operating under some sleep deprivation, having stayed up talking to Anna until 2am, then up at 7am. Some photographer I am.

I had problems adjusting to the length of day in England. England is approximately the same latitude as northern Canada--approaching 20 hour long days in June. The first morning in London I thought, oh, I'll just leave the curtains open and get up with the sun. The sun rises. I get up. I shower. I feel like HELL. I look at the clock. It's bloody 4am. Aggghhh! And then in the evenings I'd be working or reading and look at the clock and it's freakin' 10pm and still light out and I've not had dinner and I'm nowhere near ready to sleep. So...not so much sleep this trip. But like I said earlier, weather: flat out gorgeous and such a relief after Florida's steamy summer.



Front of the house with two blurry people. Sigh.


First stop Kenilworth Castle approx 45 mins away.