shewhomust | In bloom

Yesterday we joined the City of Durham Trust in celebrating the inauguration of a memorial bench with a picnic in the Botanic Gardens. Yes, another bench, though strictly speaking this was a replacement bench: one the Trust had previously sponsored in memory of a member had reached the end of its life, and his nameplate was being transferred to a new bench, with the addition of another name and a celebration of the Trust's eightieth anniversary. The sun shone, the speeches were brief, and we sat on the numerous seats in that part of the garden to eat our several picnics and chat.

Our previous visit to the gardens had been at the end of March, when the tulips were on the verge of flowering, so I had expected they would be over by now, but no, the pots were still brimming with spectacular colour. This picture doesn't really illustrate that, but I love its ssculptural qualities, both leaves and buds:

Inside the greenhouses, things were in bloom:

But we left the gardens, and went for a walk in the bluebell woods:

It's all about the blue, of course. But there's just one slope of blue-and-white, bluebells mixed with stitchwort:

At the entrance to the woods are several fallen trees, one with a plaque telling us it was brought down by storm Arwen. But there's new growth as well: