Bank Holiday Beauty - To Be Continued in Volume 2

11:40 am: So, it's Monday and I woke up 10am! YES! It is Bank Holiday - no work, no plans, a lie in and the sun is out. What am I going to do? I am going to indulge my inner 40 year old and wander round Wisley gardens with my parents large, 'professional' looking camera and take artsy shots of all the pretty flowers! Might even stop at the cafe and treat myself to cake! I'm feeling a little low today. I still have a cold which is doing my head in and the pre-triathlon worries are starting to whisper inside my head.... yes, it's two weeks away but trust me, they are already there. I don't know why or how but Wisley distracts me from the little friend in my head and lets me appreciate how blessed I am to be a part of a beautiful planet.

Today, the little friend in my head is obsessing about stupid things and using them to make me feel self conscious and self doubting - around this time last year I was going through a really rough time and was forced to come home from uni for a week because I just wasn't coping. Things were going south with a guy and I decided at 3am after not being able to sleep that enough was enough. I text Dad who told me to get on the next possible train and come home for as long as I needed. It was great being home apart from everyone was out during the day, giving me way too much time on my own to worry and berate myself about what was going on.... even though it wasn't really my issues that were causing the 'relationship' (I use this word VERY tenuously) to go sour. Issues between myself and the man in question have all been dealt with and there are, much to my happiness, no ill feelings between us. I genuinely wish him every happiness whatever he is up to in his life now.

So, during my week at home from uni, I wound up in the Wisley car park after going for a drive and I found a way to take my mind off things for a few hours. I had a camera with me and decided to just throw myself into being a 'nature photographer' for the afternoon.... just to give my little friend something to focus on.

ASIDE: I am starting to worry that I may be portraying myself as a schizophrenic, which I am not. But I think there are lots of us who have an inner voice who sometimes is our best friend and makes us feel like the ruler of the world and other times, has an immense power to make us doubt everything and anything we believe ourselves to be. I think that sometimes, this little friend as I call my voice, latches on to the small doubts that we have and makes them larger than life so we cannot ignore them. It is at these times where I have to pretend to be in a play during my own life, and distract the voice in my head so that I can actually have time to process events in a rational way. 

Having discovered this way to get out of my head and remind myself of how wonder the world is and other sickly, positive mantras that you can come up with, Wisley became an escape for me. For those who have never been or never heard of it - it's just a massive expanse of fields that people have turned into various garden plots and rockeries and huge tropical greenhouses. It's lovely, there are ponds and cafes, a fruit orchard, a rose garden that boasts 100's of species of rose.... the list goes on and on. It is easy to spend a whole afternoon just getting lost in the beauty and the smells and the sounds of the gardens. I love the way that my senses get overpowered by it all, leaving no space for my brain to go off in a panic about all the tiny things it likes to obsess over.

I haven't worked out yet exactly why I'm feeling 'off' today but hopefully, after a few hours in the sun and behind a lens, I'll feel better.

I love the colours in this Tulip.
The streak along the centre of the
petal is stunning!

I popped into the garden this morning and took some pictures of our flowers to get me in the mood for Wisley. It's looking really lovely now most of our bulbs have come into flower.

This is our Wisteria. It's just gone into
flower and is starting to look brilliant.

These are so cute! I'm not sure what they
are called but I love the colour of them and
how dainty they are.

Another picture of our Wisteria.
Can't wait for it to go into full flower.

Another of the lovely little pink flowers. Must
learn their names. They are so delicate, I love
them.

   

These are some more Tulips that Mum planted in our garden. The multi coloured one is not supposed to be there. It is supposed to be red too but there must have been a mutation in the bulb because it has grown white and red! Isn't it gorgeous?? Definitely my favourite by far!

17:42: Wisley visit was great! The sun was out and I got some really lovely photos. I have never seen the place to busy in my life. There was a queue for the car park when I first arrived and I'm not great at traffic jams so I by passed that and headed for the over flow car park.... got there and guess what, it was full too. The road to Wisley is really windy and narrow and has basically no turning spots so I carried on and was going to turn around in the car park of a pub but, yep, you guessed it, it was full too. The pub is just after a lock and there is a one-car-at-a-time bridge that you have to cross to get over the river.

Now, it's a bank holiday, the pub is full, there are people walking their dogs and there is a queue of traffic on both sides waiting to cross the bridge. Two cars came over the bridge from the other side and then the two in front of me pulled away to go, I figured that people had decided it was a two at a time type thing to keep traffic moving. You know how drivers sometimes all start thinking the same thing which makes sense - I thought this was happening so pulled into the hedge to let the queue on the other side move and some jackass from the back of the queue pulled out and over took the car behind me and me and just went over the bridge. My biggest pet peeve is oblivious people - it gets me SO bad. I mean, how much effort does it take to view the situation and realise that everyone is trying to get somewhere but there has to be some sort of system to keep things moving and people sane! I mean, it's just plain rude, if you ask me. That car and another followed from the back of the line until this really lovely couple who were walking the dog just stopped in the road so that I could go over the bridge. We had a little chat and they too, couldn't believe the audacity of some people to just blow past everyone and not take a blind bit of notice.

The woman who they stopped actually gestured to me like the whole situation was my fault whilst she was queue jumping. GRRR people annoy me!

Anyway, I ended up driving a big old circle back to the A3 to get back to Wisley and this time managed to get into the car park and find a space without too much hassle and into Wisley I went.

It was tulip city today! They were everywhere, really beautiful ones, mixed colours, bulbs that had obviously mutated and split off from the rest of their beds. I much prefer the individual ones, they really stand out in the crowd. The double colour tulips are also stunning. I can't wait to start a garden all my own when I get my own place. The last few years, I've really started to look forward to starting a garden - like I said, I'm 40. Maybe, I'll cultivate a garden of rust rogue flowers... only the ones who have broken free from conformity will get to stay on for another year! I shall harvest a collection of bulbs that have gone to the 'dark side'.

Now, I know that this isn't a split colour tulip but it might be my favourite picture of the whole day. The tulip was just so perfect and the colour was so rich. It came out really well on the camera but on a proper screen it looks even better. 

Look at these colours!! So beautiful, like a little fire billowing out of the ground! 

I love the frilly edges to the petals of this particular species. It's so dainty, like a lady going to a high tea.

Stunning! 

I was blown away by the perfection of this flower too. The delicate colour
blending and gentle overlapping of the petals is simply beautiful.

Beautiful.

These were some of my favourites too. The pink flecks
on the edges of the petals must have taken a lot of breeding
between species but it works so beautifully.

Another firey variation.

So pretty. Really delicate.

One went rogue! This tulip was in a bed with perfectly
purple tulips and this one was just standing there,
tall and proud, in the middle of the bed. Stunning. 

I love the curly petals here. A little bit more individual
than the usual shape to tulip petals.

Exquisite

I love how this one is still shut, it hasn't quite
woken up to spring yet. 

There were a lot of green flowers around today. Something
I hadn't really seen before - a really interesting variation.

So that was the tulips - yes there were hundreds! Check out my next blog entry for more pictures - orchids, robins, a hippo and other weird and wonderful Wisley creations.

M xx