Snowdrops-Another Spring at Kingston Lacy - Part One

The snowdrops are blooming earlier this year at Kingston Lacy. Yesterday, the rain stopped, so we drove westwards into Dorset for a family walk among spring flowers. It seems to have become a tradition. When our elderly parents were alive, we brought them to Kingston Lacy in spring. The years have passed, so now we meet our son and his family and explore the woods and gardens with our granddaughter. A happy, curly haired toddler who loves flowers and splashing in the mud.

The grey, grand old house, built by the Bankes family in the 17th century and now owned by the National Trust, stands in acres of landscaped parkland. We drove in along the main driveway, through pasture and winter trees.

We walked across the courtyard and through a gate in a high brick wall. Blue-pink pulmonaria flowers were in bloom amongst the shoots of tulips and later flowers.

A robin sang in a tree beside the path, letting visitors to his territory know that this was HIS garden.

The ornate architecture of the rooftop.......

....and the rear view of Kingston Lacy House. The house is closed for the winter. Blinds cover the great glass windows, protecting fine furniture and paintings from the light.

From the rear terrace, a straight path leads to a stone obelisk.

In the formal garden to the side of the house, urns and statues are hidden away in green boxes, to protect them from damage by the frost.

The strangely pruned box hedge, like green globules of frogspawn or a mass of cells. Tucked underneath, a stray cluster of snowdrops bloomed.

On an old stone garden bench, griffins watch the generations come and go.

In the walled garden, the snowdrops shone out , white and beautiful against dark , mulched soil or bright green moss.

The first daffodils were almost opening their buds........

...and a rotting tree trunk showed signs that woodpeckers had been for a meal of insects in the soft old wood.

The Egyptian obelisk on the south lawn, dates from around 118 BC. In 1820(AD), it was found on the island of Philae by William John Bankes of Kingston Lacy. Bankes was a seasoned traveller with a deep interest in ancient Egypt. He bought many Egyptian artifacts during his travels and they now comprise an important collection at Kingston Lacy House.

The Philae Obelisk is engraved with characters in both ancient Greek lettering and in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Bankes deciphered the names of Ptolemy VII and of his sister Cleopatra on the Philae obelisk, contributing to the knowledge of hieroglyphics that had been deciphered by scholars who studied the Rosetta Stone ( which is now in the British Museum).

According to the National Trust website, the obelisk had a long and difficult journey from Egypt to Dorset. It took the strength nineteen horses to raise it to its vertical position once again. The foundation stone upon which it rests was laid by the Duke of Wellington when he visited Kingston Lacy House.

In the days of William Bankes, the ethics of removing ancient historical treasures from their countries of origin were very different from those of the present day. Wealthy European travellers and collectors thought little of taking artifacts out of their historical context, and so it is that a tall and foreign monument stands today in a Dorset garden, far from the sands of Egypt.

Spiralling bark of chestnut trees at the parkland edge.

The house in its winter sleep.

Volunteer gardeners were pruning and clearing beneath the trees.

A watery sun shone through the branches.........

...but could not compete with lime-yellow brightness of aconites beside the woodland path.

Periwinkle Blue

On Monday morning, as frost melted in the sun, I found the first blue periwinkle of early spring.

Beech buds had lost the scaly coverings of winter and waited, silver against the sky, to burst into leaf.

Woody`s coat gleamed in the sunlight.

Pockets of frost stayed white in a shady corner of a field........

.....but in the sun, even short cropped grass seemed to be growing once again.

More primrose flowers had opened,

starlings waited in high branches, until I filled the bird table........

...and out in the lane, hazel catkins shook out their yellow lambs tails in the boundary hedge.

Morning Rest on the Heath

The heavy rain clouds of yesterday blew eastwards in the night. This morning dawned with freezing fog. As the sun burned through, wet coated ponies rested in the bracken on Stonechat Hill. The dun mare is sturdy and appears to be in foal. I walked over the brow of the hill to find her resting in bright sunshine. She seemed to be fast asleep, but my footsteps in the bracken roused her.

She was the first to stand up...

and s-t-r-e-t-c-h.......

She was listening to voices in the lane on the hill.........

....and then her ear turned my way........

........and she listened as the young grey mare behind her stood up, stretched and waited until their little bay friend stood up and also stretched in the warming sun.

I turned away as they stood and dozed. Still too sleepy to move, they held an ear pricked towards my footsteps as I crunched across dry leaves and walked away.

Misty Nightfall

Today, the first morning of February, dawned grey, cold and icy. I was out in the fields, feeding hay and breaking ice in water troughs, when a fine, mizzly drizzle began. Mucking out field shelters and clearing the grass, it felt like living inside a cloud. The rain fell more heavily, so I went inside.

In the last hour of afternoon, the sun came out. A pale blue sky dipped down into gold in the west. Vapour trails criss-crossed the sky.

The Ginger pony waited for his supper. As the bowls of feed were mixed with water from the now unfrozen tap, he paced up and down the fence, impatient and snorting, sometimes pawing the earth with a hoof.

Outside, by the Forest gate, the black mare with one blue eye waited, hoping for a handful of hay from the wheelbarrow as we passed.

Tree branches still dripped from earlier rain, while soft white mist began to rise from wet bracken on the heath.

The Grey One, our Forest orphan who will be four years old this spring, enjoyed his bowl of feed. His outer coat was streaked dark grey with water, but underneath, the hair was soft , thick and dry.

This evening I tried taking photos as the ponies ate their hay. It made me realise just how much they move their heads as they pull at the strands of dried grasses to separate them from the pile. The shutter speed on this camera is slow, so the second had passed and the head had moved again each time I tried.

This left a ghostly image of the Ginger pony, working hard at his hay in the evening sunlight.

I raked some oak leaves back to find new green shoots of grass.

Woody had been in his stable for an hour, to be groomed and to have his feed. He was keen to go out again, into the open air.

While we tidied up the yard, the western light softened into palest blue and apricot.........

and then, in white, swirling clouds, the mist rolled in.........

....until the trees in the farthest hedgerow disappeared into gold-grey cloud.

Woody and his owner walked back to his field across the darkening grass. They are there in this photograph, but only if your screen is at its brightest. In twenty minutes, the bright, familiar world of the evening fields was hidden in fog bound night.