The Lost Gardens of Heligan in high summer ...

The last time we visited the Lost Gardens was in the springtime. They were divine. The apple trees, the bluebells and the wild garlic were blooming and the rhododendrons had just passed their best and were dropping great carpets of cerise petals on the ground.  Last week we returned to see them at the height of their summer glory. And, whilst they were very different from how they'd looked in the springtime, they delighted us with displays of ripening fruit, larder-filling vegetable drills and happy farmyard animals hanging out down by the orchards.

I've got nothing against the great Renaissance gardens or the celebrated English Landscape Movement that set out with the single objective of being pretty. All of that stuff rocks, but what really makes my heart sing is a beautiful, practical garden that's full of things I could feed my family with. And that is where these gardens come into their own. Yes, they're pretty. Yes, they please the eye. Yes, they tick all the boxes on the aesthetic check list that add up to good design. But the highest compliment that I can pay them is to say that they, quite literally, look good enough to eat.

The Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall

Happiness is a butterfly,

which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp,

Barley field in the moonlight ...

... and there's nothing to beat a moonlit stroll through a waving field of barley on a mild night in July.

Sweet dreams,

Bonny x

Noisy Neighbours ...

I've always found it much noisier down here living in the fields and rolling hills of Devon than in the suburbs of West London. Does that sound bonkers? Yes? Well just look who my neighbours are:

Okehampton ... once the beating heart of Devon

Okehampton is the town just down the road that we pass through on our regular trips to Cornwall. It sits on the edge of Dartmoor, and perhaps it's because it's on our own back door that we've never really taken the trouble to explore it properly. Does that make sense ? Am I the only person who's got an irrational tendency to overlook what's within easy striking-distance of home in favour of gallivanting off to far-flung places? I guess far-away fields always look greener ... .

Now as it happens Okehampton is a town with a lot of things to boast about, but it's a modest place that doesn't really shout much about its attractions. There's a medieval motte and bailey castle, St. James' Church, a Tudor Chapel of Ease, there's a museum of Dartmoor life, a very fine 19th century railway bridge, the Meldon Viaduct, spanning the ravine of the Okement River and, just outside of town in the beautiful village of Sticklepath there's an amazing, fully working blacksmith's forge with all the latest water-powered kit from the early days of the Industrial Revolution. I've already written about it here: Finch Forge.

Okehampton Castle, Devon