Garden of memories

I took a pano of the one-time formal garden in Benmore Gardens this afternoon, really because both the house which is home to the Gallery (on the left) and the house which I imagine belonged originally to a gardener on the left, beside the old glasshouses, were looking particularly good in the slanting sun. The garden itself is now tended, in that the grass is regularly mowed and kept tidy, and the dead trees whose disease I feel is linked to the changing nature of this part of the whole have been cut down and removed. There used to be an ornamental stone pond with a fountain, back in the day when my 40-something children were toddlers enjoying the freedom to toddle unsupervised on the smooth grass and paths - unsupervised, that is, till they strayed too close to the pond. There is now an astrolabe in its place; I'd have been a more relaxed mum had it been there 44 years ago. 

My extra for today is of the pond very close to where I took the first photo: in the space of three weeks it has lost all the vibrant colour that surrounded it and is a wonderful study in russet and brown. And I love the structural forms of the reflected bare branches, and of the dead, drooping leaves in the foreground. We spent ages here today, talking to one of the gardeners - a perfectly adult person whom we both, in our day, taught.

We are indeed getting ancient ...