(Before I begin: a service announcement! I have received complaints to the effect that my font size is too small for comfortable reading. This might have come about because I always have my screen settings showing everything in large scale and it had not occurred to me that others might not and thus my print would appear to be very tiny to them. I have now increased my font size from 15 to 17, except the final two paragraphs which I have set to 16, and I would be very grateful for any feedback, positive or negative.)
I have often been rather dismissive of gardeners because, in so far as I ever think about them at all, I always suspected they were rather fussy, bossy sort of people forever ordering their poor little plants and flowers into dead straight lines with precise and exact gaps between them like a Guards RSM marking the parade ground prior to Trooping the Colour. Now, as an officially designated, retired, old codger I have had more leisure to inspect the work of gardeners and I confess to error - again!
Last week the little 'Memsahib' and I went for a walk round the gardens at Stourhead, and this morning, with a luke-warm sun attempting to breathe some warmth into a crisp, bright coldness, we went for a stroll round the grounds of Sherborne Castle. Absolutely stunning, both of them! Everytime I visit them I am reminded of Tom Stoppard's brilliant masterpiece of a play, "Arcadia", in which the grounds, never seen, only spoken off and hinted at, are almost as much part of the play as the characters. In the play, Stoppard reminds us of the way English garden style and fashion changed during the 18th c., moving away from the French-influenced formal gardens of the Tudor era with their strict, geometric patterns into the 'natural' look of Capability Brown's landscapes. Sherborne's parkland is Brown's work and each time I visit I have to admire the sheer 'artful artifice' of it all, much in the way that I admire a superb theatre set whose realism appears to be tangible and yet you know that in the end it must suffer the fate so beautifully described in "The Tempest":
"And, like the baseles fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a wrack behind."
The fact behind the facade of the great country house garden is that the whole thing is an "insubstantial pageant" craftily constructed to lull you into a belief that you are in, and part of, nature. Alas, if ever the labours of those 'horney-handed sons of the soil' were to cease their constant endeavours to maintain that pretence, the whole thing would be a jungle within a lifetime.
But in the meantime, I am content that sometimes Man can outdo Nature.
Nice big font, thanks for looking out for us Seniors!
Posted by: Sister Wolf | Wednesday, 29 October 2008 at 23:41
Yes, I think I will stick with the big, bold 17 font. I am more than sensitive to people with old, tired eyes having just been told that the vision in my left eye is deteriorating - so perhaps from now on I will not only write in rambling circles but end up walking in circles, too!
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 30 October 2008 at 10:13
Thanks David,
I'm no longer having to wipe spittle and snot from my monitor now.
And it's much softer where the tip of my nose is concerned.
And to think I'd not credited you for for being so considerate. Apologies.
Posted by: JK | Thursday, 30 October 2008 at 18:10
No apologies needed, 'JK', just a modest contribution to 'Duff's Poor Children's Beer Fund'!
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 30 October 2008 at 18:19