A day off!

No college today, as the new third year were being inducted.

We decided to take the chance to visit Cranborne Manor, as the gardens are only open on Wednesdays.  Maggie Grey mentioned the Manor on her blog, and I realised that we had driven past it several times on our ‘avoiding the A31’ route to Walford Mill .

Although W. and I are not great gardeners, we do like gardens if they have a bit of art scattered about.

Like this lot.

Not the best day for exploring gardens – a bit cold and threatening rain – but probably as a result we had the place almost to ourselves. The gardens are unusual – there are lots of small, distinct spaces, separated by hedges, often with vistas through gates or gaps, which is the sort of thing I like.

There is also a tea shop, with well-filled freshly made sandwiches, a garden centre if you are more into gardening than we are, and a shop. [Lovely little girls’ dresses, less than lovely and more than little price tags…]

Then as we were only just up the road, we went on to Walford Mill. The current exhibition is ‘Women Working in Wood’ – some lovely, covetable furniture and miniatures – and some less covetable.

I loved this table by Tomoko Azumi – add half a dozen of these and I might give up my black ash, chrome and glass collection! These by Akiko Kuwahata were inspirational. Not every exhibitor was Japanese, but those were the ones I particularly liked – and most of the pieces on show had a similar simplicity of line and respect for the medium.

So, after toasted teacakes and tea, we came home. You might think that this means that my three a day has slipped – but no worse than yesterday! Especially when you consider that we got no post yesterday so No.1, adding the day’s envelopes to POT, could be crossed off straight away. I did get the mending done – and I did catch up with Monday’s slippage – here’s the proof.Tweedledum and Tweedledee [hereinafter known as T&T] in situ. My plan is to photograph them once a week until the summer, so any deterioration can be recorded for posterity – or at least for the degree show. [I have to keep writing that to try to lessen the panic.]

But assembling the Country Gardener got abandoned half way though, and won’t now be resumed till tomorrow.

Today’s list was:

1. Go to Cranborne Manor and Walford Mill √
2. Add envelopes to POT X
3. Write college diary for last week and plan for next week √ & X

Notice the bit of cheating clever idea there? Build in what you are going to do anyway – a knack learned in writing action plans when I was a manager. [Sometimes I don’t miss work at all. Well, all the time, really.]

I have written as much as I can of the plan for next week, leaving space for my three a day [which all start ‘envelopes’ – apart from Sunday]. The diary will be written after I’ve finished this – honest…