August Days: Chatsworth, Derbyshire

I've been away from my desk and the computer except to download and edit photos of our family times this month. Our daughter has gone home now and we enjoyed her company.  Other members of our family came over for the day and on other occasions we went out to local places of interest where we could walk and take a picnic into the Yorkshire or Derbyshire countryside.  A highlight was a pre-booked visit to Chatsworth House Gardens which we had wanted to return to.  It's always a delight to wander around the gardens and parkland there.  Mr P stayed at home whilst our daughter drove us through the Derbyshire countryside to Chatsworth Estate.   On another occasion Mr P drove us to a village where we could take a short walk along a public footpath into the vast country estate of Chatsworth. We also celebrated belated birthday occasions with exchanges of gifts and had an early pizza party bbq for Mr P's birthday which was this month. Gardens and flowers nearly always feature in my blog posts!

I'll share more soon.  Meanwhile here are a few photos of our August days. My lightbox slide show is not working at the moment although I've switched on the settings. Instead I've enlarged the scenic photos.  Enjoy!

The Cascade, Chatsworth

The Wildflower Meadow at Chatsworth House

a walk on Chatsworth Estate (a farm building)

                                                       

Thatched cottages in the village of Baslow.

a special meal out with our daughter D

                                             

                                                 

a bouquet of flowers from our other daughter M

Thank you for your visit.  Have a good day!

Celebrations

Fifty five years ago our wedding day took place on the day before Father's Day and so there has always been a combined celebration. My Dad died in 1998 but I'm thankful that our daughter in Berkshire was able to take flowers to the cemetery, although because of a tragic incident the evening before the town centre was blocked off so she had to go a round about way to get to the cemetery. We were very upset to hear that early Saturday evening there had been a terror stabbing attack on random people sitting in Forbury Gardens, a public space in the centre of Reading that I'm fond of because it holds happy memories of times spent there with my family. As a consequence, three people died and there will be further news I'm sure later on. I've known my hometown to be a quiet one so it was all the more shocking to get the news of this awful incident.  May those who lost their lives rest in peace. 

The 'Happy Anniversary' rose our Berkshire daughter gave us is blooming and after all the rain last week I went out early in the morning and cut three of the flowers and arranged them with some long stemmed sweet peas.

We were given a bouquet of mixed flowers called a 'Harmony Bouquet'. We also received seeds in the mail from our son and his family, our Berkshire daughter and her family and had telephone conversations with them.

Yesterday we enjoyed a bbq at our local daughter's home.  I'm pleased to say that the weather stayed dry and in fact it was sunny and warm so that we could be in the garden, socially distanced, of course, and we could have a relaxing time together outside.

I made a Victoria Sponge cake for our anniversary meal and took the other half to share with our daughter and grandson.  We also took the ripe strawberries from our garden to eat with the cake and sparkling wine.

I hope that your weekend was a peaceful one and look forward to catching up with your news soon.

Thank you for coming by.  Have a lovely week.

A special celebration

Last weekend we celebrated our Golden Wedding Anniversary (which had been in mid June) with our family. It's rare these days that we can all be together because of work and distance so it was good that everyone could be with us. On the Saturday we went out for lunch at the Samuel Fox Country Inn in the village of Bradwell, in the Hope Valley, Derbyshire.

The above photos show the view across the road from the inn and the park. It's a village near Castleton that's associated with lead mining. Several hat makers worked in the community and the village is known for the 'Bradwell Beaver' hat, a special safety mining helmet.  The inn is named after Samuel Fox who lived in the village and together with an employee, Joseph Hayward, is credited with inventing the world's first collapsible light steel-framed umbrella, something we didn't need last weekend, although there had been heavy rainstorms during the Friday night.

cakes and home grown strawberries

I've been writing about other gardens recently so here is our garden this season featuring the roses. I'll do a roundup of what's been growing in our garden at the end of the month.

'Brother Cadfael'

'Joie de Vivre'

'Arthur Bell'

'Cardinal de Richelieu'

'White Star'

'Wedding Anniversary'

unknown varieties

The rose is my favourite Summer flower, but the sweet pea is another that I love almost as much so I just had to include a photo of a bunch that I picked to bring into the house. What's your favourite Summer flower?

A celebration

When we were in Italy we celebrated the fifty-second wedding anniversary of one of my husband's sisters. (You may remember that about this time last year I wrote about how I met my husband at his sister's wedding when she lived in England and we remain good friends).  

This is the hotel we went to near Casamari Abbey. It's named after Caius Marius, the Roman whose villa and estate was on the site where the small settlement of Casamari  (the house of Marius) developed and the Abbey was built. Opposite the hotel stand the remains of the Roman acqua duct and there's a bridge that spans the River Amaseno, which in places is often dried up.

 A mid 20th century image of the abbey and the remains of the Roman acqua duct

There was a display in the restaurant of the local red wines such as the Cesanese del Piglio and typical regional varieties of hand made pasta.

Below are some of the dishes we enjoyed - antipasti, 'fini fini' pasta with porcini mushrooms, lasagne al forno, asparagus, pineapple soaked in maraschino liqueur and sambuca with coffee beans floating in it.

Since arriving back in England my husband has been working on the vegetable plot - more about that another time - and we've been making plans to convert an existing space into a downstairs cloakroom. In the meantime I shall be writing some more about last month's trip to Italy.