Bodnant Gardens North Wales spring 2009

This blog is truely a magnificent work Gf! Well done. You have some lovely photos and it is so interesting to see all those places with all the different flowers in them to when I visited. And it is easy to see why the garden is so famous for its Rhodos! Just amazing...... I'm glad you got some shots of the lovely big mature trees, which I seemed to have missed photo-ing. I think my favourite photos are the ones of the stream - I had no idea they were lined with so many Azaleas like that! Beautiful!

Who is that lady that keeps appearing in your photos? ;-)

Lovely blog GF ~ Glad that you both had such a good time~ will have to get up there and see for myself!

Were you stalking that woman??
Oi, missus! Is he bothering you? I can always put him back in the cage!! Lol!
Brilliant blog, GF!!
What a superb place!!

Great blog GF. Marvellous photos.
Have seen Sids blog and said I would have to visit but seeing yours there is no way too much walking to do. :~((

Tut tut!! Would do you good, Pip! Lol!

Hi Marie. I would need one of those scooters to do it or be laid up for a week so the pics will have to do as I look a p*** on a scooter :~))

Ooooh, I swooooon! Definitely going in my little note book of places to visit in May in Wales! The gray overcast makes the rhodies glow all the more! Thanks to Sid for pointing the way over here. Very nice, GF, think you won the hide & seek.

wow..what a great blog/place.....thank y

Absolutly fantastic blog and what stunning photos.

Wonderful pictures love the colouring in the rock face do they ever find any fossels.

:)

This is a magnificent garden - I must plan to visit it as I have never been there. Thanks for a great tour

My goodness! I've read Sid's blog - and enjoyed her photos, too, but you wouldn't think that this was the same place, would you?

What glorious colours there - thanks for showing us! :-))

Wow thanks for a great tour enjoyed yours aswell as Sid's

Fantastic set of photos...
Great blog :o)

Thanks everyone for your kind comments.

Morgana - Thank you for your interesting question about fossils in the rock. The rock is in fact slate. Slate is 450-600 million years old so it pre-dates the existence of humans, dinosaurs, insects, and even complex plants. Very rarely the fossil of a simple water plant can be found. Slate deposits that run up the east coast of North America are virtually identical to those found in Wales. This demonstrates that the American revolution was not the first time America gained independence.

Thank you for you reply, yes I have know fossels found in slate too. If you ever get the chance, its a beautiful place which was created by the ice age its in Yorkshire a little place called Malham cove.

Morgana - I have not yet visited Malham cove in person but have began to assimilate it's qualities as a result of your much appreciated suggestion. I like lichens and mosses and have seen the dark stripes on the rock face caused by Tom the chimney sweep sliding down.I also learnt that the fissures called grykes are home to many rare (shade-loving) plants - harts-tongue fern, wood-sorrel, wood-garlic, geranium, anemone, rue, and enchanter's nightshade.

Very interesting Gardeningfreind. If you ever venture to Malham Cove when you go through the gorge at the end is a giant waterfall that people climb, on the way through there are stones the other side grass with a stream and sheep is kept on it, if you pick up the stones on the right going down towards the water fall you will find fossels in the stone. On the opposite side of the road from this is a fairy pond and wooded area its gorgeous.

Think I found the same webpage to follow your drift, GF: "Water Babies" was my favorite childhood story, whose subliminal influence may have led to my brief career as a sweep in CO when all I really wanted was to play with the sprites! "Clints & grykes" may be words lost forever if we don't speak them back into being. Finding fossils at 10,000 ft in CO was the oddest experience: to realize that where I was sitting used to be the ocean floor, before countries had names.

My father read "Water Babies to my brother and I when we were little"..I found a copy of the book at a bookstore in Wales in May..was happy to find it as the book that my father read to us out of, is very very worn... :o)

Unless Sid reads this and beats me to it I might do a Yorkshire blog next year. On my Bodnant garden blog, the lady in the photos is Queen Catfinch. It is usually cats that do the stalking. In photo 18 we were not actually playing hide and seek. Queen Catfinch was bending down to take a photo of a cat with a mouse in it's mouth.

I wondered who you were stalking!!

We're talking not stalking...... :o) and it was such a lovely spring day too..! We had such a great day there! I cannot imagine anyone from anywhere in the UK not having been there!

Lol!! It would take me forever to get there, I dont drive!!

Train and a bus would do the job Marie..don't miss it!

One day, if I ever get some me-time!! :~))

I can recommend a very nice b&b in Llandudno Marie :-)

I'll give you a shout if I make it down there! My Geography's hopeless! Is that anywhere near Abergavenny? I'd never be forgiven if I didn't go there if I was in Wales!!

LMSO! Oh, sorry, I shouldn't laugh as you do live an awfully long way away.....Abergavenny is a smallish town not too far from where I live as a matter of fact - think it's in the county of Gwent about mid-south Wales I'd say. It's decidedly inland anyway - closish to Brecon Beacons National Park. Llandudno is in the very north of Wales, right by Snowdonia National Park, and is a coastal town.

How do you know Abergavenny?

Or pronounce it when you're lost and asking directions! How can you not drive, Marie?! In the States, that would be like not typing or breathing! Even I drove left handed clutch in Ireland, and that was a trick, only scraping the side of the rental car once... Obviously we need some sort of GoY tour bus to make the rounds of all these fabulous gardens!

LOL...glad I wasn't in Ireland when you were there ...lol..I never attempted driving in Wales..lol..was scary enough riding!..flinched for the first couple of weeks I was there..thinking we were in the wrong lane! lol..I am not driving much here lately..walking mostly as I live in a small town and if I can walk, I do...I enjoyed that part of being in Wales and am looking forward to it when I go back again. :o)

So why don't you organize the tour, Catfinch? Something on the cheap to go chivvy the natives!

I don't think I need to..seems they have that in hand already!..lol

Well, you've been getting private lessons, too! LOL.

I would have to be there for some time before I would take on driving on left instead of the right..lol...you are much braver than I.

I have never been to Wales (for shame!) even though my Mum was born there (by accident). One day, when I win the lottery, I'll go and I'll have to visit this place. It looks fabulous.

I haven't been to USA, Canada or Yorkshire but touch wood will be resolving these mistakes in 2010. I will be spending the money I saved by not doing the lottery. I remember the first time I went to France by car where they drive on the wrong side of the road. I found it easier and quicker to drive on the side I was used to. It was rather irritating though when traffic came the other way, they rudely expected me to go on the other side of the road.

Gilli - how did your mum come to be born accidentally in Wales?!?!

I've never driven on the wrong side of the road. Except for once, but we wont go into that.....

Nor Yorkshire, pity, I hear they speak a different language there. DeBeers' mining subsidiary in CO brought in right hand drive haul trucks, let's say 340 ton Cats, huge anyway: the tires were taller than I am or you probably. I was very chicken crossing the road when they came barreling down the other lane & balked at turning the once highest incorporated town in the world into a pit below sea level in the Rockies. The US & Canada are vast, with many fabulous gardens: if you get a membership at one, there's usually reciprocity to get in free to the others. Hope you plan a floriferous journey, GF, but limit your geographical area some to enjoy more in depth! The Denver Botanic Gardens is one of my favorites.

Lol! My dad's from Abergavenny!
As for not driving, I cant type either!! :~))

Which town Orgatis?..I have been in the Rockies more than once and love it there so much..there was one little town up there that touched my heart so..was so olden..like time stood still there...I have been to Oura..I think that is how it is spelled..pronounced You-ray...and many other areas of Colorado..I cannot think of the name of that one little town..it was on one of my very first visits into the Rockies..somewhere between Loveland pass and Boulder, it was on a back road..and we got caught up there in a thunderstorm..it was wild and beautiful, thunderstorm and all..

Photos 18a and 18b of Bodnant the cat added today as a result of the discovery on Sid's blog that she also met Bodnant on her visit.

Oh.. there is Bodnant the cat....what a good kitty..taking care of the mousing job..hard worker! I tried to get a photo but did not get so good a one!

Hey Sid - Did you meet anyone else when you were at Bodnant - check out photo 64a added today.

Ooo-la-la! I had no idea you mixed with such high society Gf! I did hollar up to the windows when I was there, asking if his Lordship would like to give me a personal guided tour around the garden, but I guess he must have gone out as I got no reply.

Thanks for the photos of Bodnant the Cat. Yup - that's him alright! I didn't notice him in the picture first time around - was too busy looking at the lovely Azaleas ;-)

Whew! GF, Good job! Beautiful place, beautiful pix, nice choice of prey. :-) (you're lucky Cat didn't call the cops.)

Sid..on my way to your blog next. Suspect the Cat Bodnant is a her.