Baptisms, BBQ's,Holidays and More

I have again received this Brilliant WebLog Award. This time it came from

Willow of Willows Cottage

Thank you Willow I am honoured to receive it

I am going to pass it on to Janie of From Under the Maple

Janie as most of you know is my precious daughter

I think she does brilliantly to manage an interesting blog as well as hold down a full time and high flying career as well as being Mum to darling Oliver who was 2 last weekend

She is unable to post at the moment as their computer 'died' when she returned from holiday with lots of photos of Cornwall to post on. She will be back as soon as it is possible.

I mentioned on a recent post that we were having a Baptism for a new Christian in our House Church. The venue was a play pool in the garden next door. I have her full permission to post a couple of pictures of the baptism.

Afterwards we moved to another home across the street to have a barbecue

It was a wonderful day in all

The card I made for Oliver

We bought him a traditional wooden train set

Another card made recently

I am managing to work on my computer to a point, but there are still things that need fixing.

During the 2 re-builds my printer driver seems to have disappeared

and some of my graphics stuff

I have been amazed to realise just how much I had on my computer that is not now there

I am having to gradually download much software as needed

The 'professionals' backed up my documents and everything in them including photos

but they did not back up my Outlook Express, nor any of my settings. I did therefore lose about

120 E-mail addresses and lots of information stored in folders there.

In future I will not store anything in Outlook Express that is important to me.

To think that all this came about because I attempted to install a

new wireless keyboard and mouse to replace my existing one

I don't even have a wireless keyboard installed at all now

and am using the bog standard one that came from Dell in the first place

Aren't computers wonderful!

We are off on holiday this coming Saturday

We are going to the Yorkshire Dales for a week

and basing ourselves in a Mews Cottage in Harrogate

There will eventually be lots of photos as we will be visiting

castles, country houses, gardens, caves, beautiful rolling hills

and the Spa town of Harrogate

We will then spend a night with friends in Ripon before returning home

I hope you all have a great week

I'll be back soon but in the meantime I leave you with a great tea-time treat

made by my own fair hands

The Shortbread is ready

The finished product

Chocolate Caramel Shortcake

Enjoy

My Roses and Awards

I am honoured to again have received another award. I have received this award 3 times in the last week. It came from Maria and Teresa and Laura Thank you all so much. I am passing it on to Cindy and Merisi and Sara All 3 have brilliant Weblogs, always hard choosing among the many brilliant blogs I visit.

As the first flush of roses has finished I thought it would be nice to have a reminder of the beauty that was, or at least the ones I got to take photos of.

KNOLE - A Complex Beautiful House and Garden

The week before last we paid our second visit to Knole House. This is a nice day trip as it is only 50 minutes from home. Within it's glorious deer park setting, Knole reveals itself as a complex and beautiful house, which appears like a small village when viewed from a distance. An archbishop's palace, a royal house and from 1603 to the present day, the Sackville family home, Knole has remained largely unchanged for 300 years and is certainly one of the most intgriguing houses in England.

Thirteen superb state rooms laid out as much as they were in the 17th century to impress visitors by the wealth and standing of the Sackville family. The house boasts many famous paintings and tapestries. The house inspired Vita Sackville-West, who was born at Knole, to write her best selling novel 'The Edwardians' and was also the setting for Virginia Woolf's famous novel 'Orlando'.

Knole is set at the heart of the only remaining medieval deer park in Kent where Sika and Fallow deer roam freely amongst ancient oak, beech and chesnut trees. Over
200,000 trees have been planted since the great storm of 1987 which destroyed 70% of these trees in the park - the abundance of decaying wood (see some of the photos) now provides a haven for wildlife.

Lord Sackville's private garden has been in existence for over 500 years and provides the most beautiful view of the house. The Wisteria is very old and well established creating the most wonderful display of scented blooms along the garden walls in May. We are planning to go back next May.

So if you come with me I'll take you round the inner courtyards, the outside of the house from various angles, and a little of the gardens and deer park, to see it in pictures for yourself.

The ice House

The tradesman's entrance

Please bear with me if I am not visiting your site so often

I am still working on many issues to bring my hard drive back to where it was before the rebuild

One of the issues with my computer now is that it will not scroll properly

making it not so easy to scroll through blogs

I am hoping this will be rectified when my graphics card drivers

are returned to their original form

My Garden Confessions and Contrasts

I'll start with confessions! This is the time of year when I become bored with my garden. The excitement of most of the new growth and colour of springtime and early summer has faded, things are generally 'going over', blossom pruning has left large gaps in places and it can start to look jaded. Just a matter of trimming and keeping tidy now until the many Autumn chores.

The weather has hotted up since we were shivering last Sunday at Pilgrims Hall and this week sees temperatures hitting 86f in the London area. Not a lengthy heatwave we are told though, it is set to deteriorate at the weekend. So for now lunch and dinner in the garden to make the most of it.

So having done with the confessions, let's take a walk around the garden and see what CONTRASTS we can find.

Contrasts in the Herb Garden

And not forgetting the pond

COMPUTER UPDATE

It is now rebuilt but not knowing this was going to be the action taken the company was not in the possession of my application discs so I had to take them in today

Also some problem with video and graphics card - another internet search!

I had just been thinking about getting my computer back and up and running

I had failed to register that I will have to reinstall the various software that I have added myself

So I am having great lessons in learning patience, something that I am not very good at