Delayed Thursday 4th July post

 The advantage of writing Thursday's post on Friday is I know what the election results are! I'm hoping for a government that is humane, compassionate, wise, courageous, and where the MPs have integrity and put the welfare of this nation above tribal politics. That's a lot to ask. 

On to more frivolous things; 

we took advantage of the weather (as it 'it's not actually raining) to go out to the Prairie Gardens in Henfield again. It's a month to the day since we were last there, and a lot has changed.

The little wooden boxes are surviving well; 

And I had remembered my notebook to make rubbings of the wood blocks inside. I can see that some people, frustrated by not having and paper, or maybe too little to understand, coloured in the woodblock with the crayons!

There are some new sculptures. I think these are meant to change colour - we wondered if that was because they would be affected by the sky, or maybe the pigments in the glass are temperature sensitive? I took this picture partly because of the sculpture, and partly to show the immense variety of foliage in the beds. Those are cardoons at the very back, about seven feet tall. Mine have reached the height of my garden fence and have purple thistle-like flowers on them. 

  

We stopped for refreshments! I had half a chocolate brownie, and he had the other one-and-a-half brownies (!). We sat in the same little arbour as last time, but swapped sides. I took this picture because I liked lovely curves of the side panel 

Most people would have burned or got rid of their old garden furniture when it got to this state... this old chair is now encrusted with lichen and almost rooted into the soil. If only we had the space to let our garden benches gently decay like this in a corner... the risk is someone would sit on them. That did happen once when a friend of mine plumped herself down on one of our old benches which half gave way...  

Finally, the cutting garden. The sheltering beech hedges are thickly in leaf, and there is hardly any bare earth to be seen.

I'm hoping that on our next visit many more of the plants will be flowering.