Sunday, May 07, 2006

Ist Open day of the Year

Far from the madding crowds ? Not likely, in the thick of it I'd say. Had absolutely lovely weather, despite the forcast all week suggesting heavy showers on Sunday. Auntie Sue arranged the teas, in aid of raising money for her boys to cycle from Lands End to John O'Groats, in order to raise money for Ty Hafen, a Welsh Childrens Hospice. They are part of a party of 12, hers are 13, and 16. Good luck to them all...
Child no 3 volunteered to man the gates with some help (?) from the younger members of the household. This is the car park at about 11am (We'd just opened). As we opened at 11am it was a nice steady pace until about 1.30/2pm when we suddenly seemed to have another 200 arrive. Perhaps most gardens open at 2pm and people get used to going then. In total we had about 320 people visit ( + about 15 older persons sneaked in apparantly), but raised over £700 which was brilliant.
As you can see the gravel area outside the makeshift tearooms was rather busy at times !!

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The garden suddenly came together on the Saturday, I gave one final mow and edged all the grass, which takes hours and kills my useless arms at the best of times, but to have to do the front and back was agony...but it had to be done. The weeks of weeding seems to have paid off too, I only finshed some bits the day before and I think there were still quite a few in the bottom corner, but you do get to the stage where you don't actually care anymore. The tulips were stunning especially in the red beds by the steps.

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I thought I'd best add some pictures of the secret shed for those of you who's spouses/partners/children do not like gardening. This amusement kept many a child/parent busy whilst the other was free to look around the garden in as long a time as possible. There were a few tears (mainly from the adults) when it was time to go...and t'spouse has promised some young children that he'll try and get the dalek finished by the next open day....

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