Sweet Pea, Northumberland

R. is such a great gardener. I met her in the late 80s in London, where she was establishing a wonderful walled garden at her flat in Peckham. We were teachers in Tottenham Court Road; actually she was Director of Studies and I was a 'casual' summer teacher! She has since moved back to Northumberland, and I to Stroud, and we have both changed careers, with R becoming a succesful garden designer. It's been ten years since we visited R and her partner A. in Northumberland, in their house on the moors, and much has changed and been added to.

This sweet pea is growing in the potager, which is an area of raised beds for growing vegetables, and for flowers to cut. See here. R and A both love to cut flowers for the house, and A loves growing veg. R got the idea for creating a potager from one of the grand houses where she worked. Until then she had never heard of a potager. As indeed, neither had any of us.

We spent the morning chatting, and then left to make our way back to Stroud. CleanSteve and I stopped to blip some ruins that we both thought Ricky Shitpants would like, but CleanSteve has beaten me to blipping them. Other choices were dramatic clouds seen from the car on the motorway; a Northumbrian stone wall; a charging station for electric cars at Charnock Richard service station; a blurry Romany bardo that we passed on the road in Cumbria. But this one has won because it says most about R, and our visit. Ten years is far too long to leave between meetings!

This shot is probably most in focus, too. I was pleased to have something soft to shoot in macro after all the dramatic lochs and glens, which call for wide- angle shots.

I am going to try and back blip yesterday, too. Despite my best attempts, I could not get a signal last night.