Thursday 8 October 2009

"In an English country garden"

Apologies for the somewhat misleading title, these are pictures I promised to put on my blog and were taken in my mum's garden when I visited during my trip back to the UK last month. She has put in an extraordinary amount of work into the garden and it looks stunning. So not only did I have the pleasure of being home with my mum again but with the Indian summer the UK experienced, we were able to sit out in a very beautiful garden - it might as well have been in the English countryside.

For those unfamiliar with the song, here's a version of "In an English Country Garden" - we knew it very well at school except the lyrics we sang were a littler ruder than this! It comes with a warning though - it's sung by Rolf Harris.



According to my mum the flowers were just past their best but I found that hard to believe. As usual, though, I haven't a clue what any of them are but you can click on the pictures to get larger versions - I recognised the sunflowers by the way!




Incidentally, that photo at the top was taken late at night just before I sat down to watch "Match of the Day" on a Saturday evening - it's strange what you discover you miss most when you live so far away from where you grew up.

5 comments:

Zuzana said...

Your mom is an artist; that surely is a garden according to my taste.;) The first picture reminds me of almost an enchanted garden...

Karen in Honolulu said...

Oh I love to read about England and always imagine myself in a country garden. It seems to me that flowers are easier to grow there than here in the islands. Your mother has created a beautiful setting.

And you must have some beautiful colors to look at also if your up there on that mountain.

Tom said...

Protege - it's unbelievable what my mum has done with the garden - I wish it a telent I inherited!

Karen - thanks for stopping by! Unfortunately I'm unable to make anything grow whether it's in the UK or Hawaii so I'm not going to offer an opinion! I certainly can't argue with the beautiful colours on the mountain though, especially at sunset and sunrise - I'll be back there shortly!

Tom

Karen in Honolulu said...

Tom, I've asked others but they don't seem to know. This may be something you would.

Is there a way to tell what kind of sunrise there will be in the morning by looking at the sky the night before?

Tom said...

Karen,

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, i.e., if it's weather related or something else, so if you could frame your question a little differently it might help.

There's an old saying in the UK which I'm sure you've heard variations of:

"Red sky at night, shepherd's delight, red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning". I think it originated from Shakespeare but might be wrong about that.

Although not scientific there's a ring of truth to it, at least for the UK. A red sky in the evening means that there are lots of particles in the atmosphere, including water, which are illuminated by the setting sun in the west. Since the weather systems in the UK move west to east that means the wet weather has passed otherwise the sunlight wouldn't get to the clouds. It's the opposite in the morning.

I doubt this would apply to Hawaii and it often doesn't work in the UK either!

Are you wondering about the effects of vog? That makes both sunsets and sunrises very red! Still, your question is a little too vague to give you a really good answer.

Hope I've helped a little.

Tom