Side & Back Yard on Park

A weekend of grooming and losing loppers in the branches three times!!! Plus lighting fires, shifting the club house around and back then mowing the crazy green grass one last time...

Front Yards in RVA

Both are lovely, leafy and have lousy lawns. One is ours for now and the other is our future home...

First Friday on Broad

A rave for plants that have been recuperated by this artist team and a tomato surviver for M to take home and plant. Then across the busy street intense cartoon doodles with some subversive content, cuss words and fast foods refs. She loved it and finally Daniel Leivick's amazing, giant satellite-sourced images of a monochrome parched California.

A great night for art!

Homework on Floyd

We got it cracked today with 'how to plant a seed' storyboarded, whilst the guinea pigs roamed at our feet and the aforementioned plants got tied to stakes aka re-purposed swords.

Yard Work on Floyd

Sunday evening wood fire after lawn mowing with blade bending pot-hole incident, wood chopping with multiple bugs set free and simple grass-in-pot planting.

We cracked sweet potatoes and sweetcorn fire-baking but the halloumi & courgette kebabs were still charred, uncooked wrecks.

Guinea pigs on Floyd

They are quite literally in clover...

More Mount Vernon on Floyd

My latest purchase is a popular read but when J spotted this page she was so happy and I hadn't even noticed it - the walled gardens at Mount Vernon - which made it in to the top 250 gardens to see. I've done 10% of them but there are more within reach... Herefordshire I mean.

Mount Vernon near Washington

Us and 8,000 others were at George's place this holiday but a sharp breeze meant we had the landscape pretty much to ourselves. Two walled gardens, espaliered blossoming peaches, the friskiest fluffiest lambs, the sombre family tombs, the plain slave graveyard (150+) and the immense waterfront vistas and a packed warm bus that swept us back to the start and a crazy, over-crowded junk-food lunch. It was still post-flu exhausting but worth the effort for J's complete devotion to the subject and the real things.

Hauser and Wirth, Bruton, Somerset

Miles away from anywhere, down winding roads but worth it... Beautifully restored barns as an uber gallery, reclaimed Dieter Roth-inspired bar and super, lovely cafe full of art and out the back a bleak landscape by the Oudolf, of High Line fame. We grabbed giant umbrellas, pondered a surrealist clocks, grassy islands in the path and then lay down on local sheepskin rugs and gazed at a trippy take on local farming, thanks to Pipilotti Rist.

Everything is going to be alright, as it says in neon, though the clotted cream could be less drippy.

Fall Playdate on Floyd

Yard clearance with helpers... then fire pit experiments that relied on the sandpit for flame retarding, until the dry leaves in there caught fire.

Trip 1: Poe Museum, RVA

So to the start of the alternative curriculum and a weekly encounter with things not far from here.

Today is was Edgar Allen Poe. Of whom I knew little, though perhaps absorbed a bit thanks to Benedict's Sherlock and a dash of Stephen King. The horror starts with a tiny boy of theatrical roots, adopted into a Richmond family with big issues and ends with this tiny museum, that is not even one of the 10 homes he lived in. However he once stood outside the entrance stone cottage as a young cadet showing a French General the town and bricks from his first place of work help build this shrine at the end of the magical courtyard garden, with a pair of black cats observing.

There was so little directly of him, at most his 'death' stockings and scraps of handwriting and after-death busts, but in it's atmospheric handling, plentiful labels and characterful setting, the museum conjures him up brilliantly and there was even an echo of Lord Byron at Newstead Abbey, hanging in the air.

I consumed two short stories in the Library later - The Cask of Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum. Dark, dark tales.

Rotunda Alley, University of Virginia

A little more strolling at UVA revealed serpentine walls, magic enclosed gardens and the colonnaded E-Range walkway. We hung out in the magnolia trees on 'The Tog' and crossed 'The Lawn' as usual.

Band Night in Paradise Park

By chance P and the kids happened upon this gathering of bands in our '60s pocket park. It was magic occasion, with lots of familiar faces and only one neighbor who found it all too much and so the police checked it out too.

A shout out to the fab Littlefoot on tour from Rhode Island and local stars Herro Sugar aka Manatree. The sound was amazing and the audience were special.

The Gardens, Williamsburg

We bought an annual pass and gained access to the Governor's Garden and it was magic. The cottage gardens weren't skipped though... our little bit of England over here.

Lurie Gardens, Chicago

This is prairie planting gone mad and fabulous and then a Renzo Piano pavilion (Art Institute of Chicago) to overlook, just for good measure. The Frank Gehry structure is actually secondary.

Wow the Lurie Gardens on Millennium Square and its rill... The feature of choice this week as a friend wins gold at RHS Flower Show Tatton Park.

Reading Time on Floyd

A new spot to read...

Herb Reservation on Floyd

Want to know what makes a grumpy guinea pig happy?! A nice herb reservation to free-roam in.

A new layer of bricks was added c/o J & me and Moo Moo's new habitat introduction was supervised by M. So far breakfasts, coffees, lollypops and other refreshment sessions have been had all in contemplation of Moo Moo on the roam. The patch is growing bare and the mint supply is suffering. The lavender is his place of refuge and chives hold no appeal... More planting due.

Our view of The High Line

Thanks to the sharing-economy we certainly got a view of the High Line for our weekend in NYC. A bit precipitous if you sat out on the fire escape but a great vantage point to spot passing grannies and singers and joggers and waving couples and tourists. Morning jogs for M & me and baked goods from Chelsea Market en route home - bliss!

Parkour on Floyd

Yup - Sunday afternoon action in RVA involves a bit of neighbourhood parkour... Check out the video that moves from next door to ours to the next yard and eventually involves all the kids on the block.

R&R on Floyd

Chocolate toast for Sunday lunch whilst one parent retires and the other ponders the lawn... Junie B. Jones being the book of choice.