This seventh week is the mid point of this surreal spring season in which we watch colour and beauty emerge on each and every day. Halfway to mid-summer’s day, the advance guard subsides, and new joys await.... Sunday 3 May  The fences here have all been put to work - supporting the trained mulberry and … Continue reading Week 7: Andover Garden Watch 2020 – a very special spring

2020 - the sixth week watching colour and beauty emerge on each and every day of this year’s surreal spring Sunday 26 April  The perennial and annual flowers are not far behind the bulbs and the blossom in this warm spring The water irises emerge (despite the ravages of Ratty the water-vole) Here’s the first … Continue reading Week 6: Andover Garden Watch 2020 – a very special spring

2020 - the fifth week watching colour and beauty emerge on each and every day of this year’s surreal spring Sunday 19 April - and another hot and sunny week The dramatic first flush of spring flowers with their intense colours makes way for abundance of leaf green. The river bank and its willows, alders, … Continue reading Week 5: Andover Garden Watch 2020 – a very special spring

2020 - the fourth week watching colour and beauty emerge on each and every day of this year’s surreal spring Easter Sunday  2020 The three very little people (threes and under) each received one of these (courtesy of the postman rather than the Easter bunny, or Peter Rabbit). And so did David !   The three … Continue reading Week 4: Andover Garden Watch 2020 – a very special spring

2020: the third week watching colour and beauty emerge on each and every day of this year’s surreal spring Sunday 5 April - Palm Sunday  The Euphorbia mellifera begins to flower; the foxgloves are picking up, tucked in behind the Pittosporum ‘Tom Thumb’ (not ‘Red Dwarf’ but perhaps it should have been!)  were grown from … Continue reading Week 3: Andover Garden Watch 2020 – a very special spring

2020: the second week watching colour and beauty emerge on each and every day of this year’s surreal spring Sunday 29 March - the strong NE wind brought a real drop in temperature  We were visited by a solitary Red Kite - no longer an unusual sight, but too fleeting for me to snap. This … Continue reading Week 2: Andover Garden Watch 2020 – a very special spring

2020: a unique opportunity to watch colour and beauty emerge on each and every day of this year’s spring - and we hope to be here to see, enjoy and record it all.       Oh - and by the way - this is astronomical, not meteorological spring. Of course! Saturday 21 March - brilliant … Continue reading Week 1: Andover Garden Watch 2020 – a very special spring

It was another wet early March day in London. Fortuitously I had already arranged to meet my brother in the afternoon at Tate Modern, as anxiety about Covid 19 was beginning to grow, but before so-called lock-down was declared. The train journey was tense, and I chose to walk to Piccadilly for a late morning … Continue reading Portraits : David Hockney and friends: 4 March 2020

25 January  – 1 February 2020 Saturday sadly was our last if brief moment in the UK as an EU member state. We clambered off an Easyjet flight from Nantes to eat a leisurely lunch in a Lebanese outlet in Gatwick North, before clambering on another Easyjet flight to Turin. We arrived as the light […]

Tuesday 21 January We caught the 09.06, having walked through frosty Andover, heading for Stansted via Clapham, Vauxhall, and Tottenham Hale to the Ryanair flight at 14.40 to Nantes. A slow but easy journey; and we were early.  This is a WSET fact-finding visit for David, and as a passenger, something of a holiday for … Continue reading The Loire – January 2020