Down the garden path...

Anyone embarking upon the creation of a garden would do well to read this book by Beverley Nichols. It chronicles his joys and obstacles in creating his own country garden in England. We were given an original copy by our friend Wyn, a horticulturalist and environmental planner. We liked it such much that we went and bought our own copy (being bibliophiles). You can find out more about Beverley Nichols at:

http://www.timberpress.com/beverleynichols/index.cfm

This is the frontice piece in our friend's original:

Willoughby and Spencer

Another small aside to introduce our two boys, Willoughby (4 years old) and Spencer (18 Months old). They live with us in our villa in town, but just go nuts whenever they visit Willowbrook. Here are some pics and a video of Willoughby swimming.

Park Plans...

A first draft for the overview of the main part of the park

Autumnal Dinner party...

With every change in season we throw a small dinner party for our closest friends at Eden, our Edwardian villa in town. It is a chance to get together and celebrate with good wine and seasonal food, and also an opportunity to try out new table-scapes and ideas. This year it was also our first chance to 'test-drive' the newly redecorated dining room.

We decided to try to catch the falling leaves of autumn in a still-life cascade. We collected various deciduous leaves and touched them up with a light coat of gold paint. We then strung them on thin nylon and draped them from the chandelier in the dining room.

We scattered the remaining leaves over the centre of the table and added some nesting 'quail'.

For the invitations we used some metallic bronze card and copper ribbon, and gold paint on a rubber stamp of an Acanthus leaf:

Making hay while the sun shines

Today (after the many initial outlays in setting up the company), we made our first small profit. We baled and sold 72 bales of hay from the site.

As we will not get much growth over the coming winter, we plan to get the lake dug and the orchard planted over the start of winter.