Remember summer? So someone on a blog mentioned the Battle of Maldon in Essex and I remembered a couple of trips there. Not much to write at the moment but have been watching videos on both Australia and Japan. What do I learn? that Australian property is becoming very expensive, similar to Britain. But that there is in Japan many, many empty houses out in the countryside just left to rot. I wonder with the uptake of working from home if we will not see a greater movement of people around the world? Would you go to Japan, and do that thing most Britishers adore doing which is 'doing up' a run down property?
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| Pretty gardens in Maldon |
But English silver is not so softly won:
first iron and edge shall make arbitrement
Harsh war-trial, ere we yield tribute'
I think English people would find Japanese houses rather different to do up than English or European houses. If you've been looking at Japan, you probably know that already.
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ReplyDeleteThey are very beautiful the wooden ones, the design is so simple but whether 'doer uppers' could be as tidy I doubt it Andrew.
Lovely to see those flowers, Thelma. Tired of the cold.
ReplyDeleteYes the cold makes one achy, and the sun always takes an age to get down into the valley Ellen.
ReplyDeleteHow lovely to see a reference to Maldon. My wife and I grew up there, and that is my wife's family home (the blue one) there in your photos. Her mum is an incredible gardener (as you can see in the first photo), and my wife inherited her green fingers. We got married in her equally beautiful back garden four years before your photo. We were at school at the time of the millennium commemoration of the Battle of Maldon, for which there were huge events in the town. We still regularly go back to visit. As you will know from your visit, the house is next to the River Blackwater. My wife's family had a classic wooden sailing boat for her whole childhood, which was moored on the jetty just the other side of the lane. I wrote this piece from there in 2016, and you can see the house in the second photo: https://landscapestory.co.uk/2019/01/02/december-river-blackwater/
ReplyDeleteThank you for continuing to recommend my blog.
Best wishes,
Paul Knights.
What a coincidence and I am glad it brought back happy memories of your wife's family home. I do love your blog for its excellent description of the countryside and especially of course the ruined farms up on the moors. You trace with minute exactitude their histories. I am too old now to wander up on the moors, and have no dog either, a necessity. So your descriptions fill in the blank spaces of this new landscape. Bringing up your son to love the landscape as well as he marches ahead of you in all your photos.
DeleteI wonder the point of staying with your lord, once he was slain in battle. Maybe I'm just too practical, but it seems to me that there's a big difference between valor and fool's errand. Alas, poetry will never be written about the likes of me. Those gardens though. How I needed to see a picture like that, over flowing with flowers and light!
ReplyDeleteThey are true English cottages gardens Debby, a great summer flowering of everything. As for staying with your leader till the end, that is honourable practise' War is an important game, often a necessity and it would not do to be called a coward for the rest of your life. Anyway Bryhtnoth sent the horses away.
DeleteI always wanted lots of space in the family garden, big enough for the boys to play football out the back with their friends. Plus a bbq near a table and chairs. But your cottage gardens are denser, prettier and presumably easier to care for.
ReplyDeleteWe have smaller land spaces Hels and tend to garden them more intensely than either American or Australian gardens, which have so much more space.
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