Stourhead Gardens,Wiltshire

I was out walking yesterday morning and the sky was blue, the temperature a pleasant 55f and I ended up having to take off my jacket. Much appreciated after the weather that we have had recently. As soon as I arrived home I took the opportunity to prune all the Clematis as February is the best time for this. The baking that I had planned did get done, but not until 5.0 pm.

Today the weather is dreary so my thoughts turn to a Summer post. Here we see the beautiful gardens of Stourhead on a June afternoon. Stourhead is a world famous landscaped garden and Palladian mansion.

It lies in the secluded privacy of its own valley and is one of the finest landscaped gardens in the world. Mathew MacFayden proposed to Keira Knightley in the film Pride & Prejudice here.The garden was designed by Henry Hoare II as a place to entertain and was laid out between 1741 and 1780. The magnificant lake is central to the iconic garden of classical temples and follies while the Palladian mansion houses unique collections of Chippendale furniture, magnificant paintings and an exquisite Regency library. Amongst the wider estate Two Iron Age hill forts can be discovered.

However, for me in this instance it is the garden that holds the most fascination. So, come walk around the lake with me and see what I mean.

The mansion and entrance

One of the follies

Another thing I have been getting up to this week is setting up my first i-Pod. When I think that this has 120 Gigabytes of space and my first computer only had 12 Megabytes - how technology has changed in that 16 years. I am working on installing my music,probably thousands in the end and then I will get to grips with installing all the videos I have taken of my dear Grandson. I am so pleased with the sound I get from this tiny speaker sound system - much better than our music centre. So, having taken months to make the decision to buy one, I am very pleased with it.