Visiting Gardens...

...is a lot easier than gardening!
Together with Livia and Roger we took part in a tour of two gardens today. This is a picture from the first one. The lady with the crossed arms is the main gardener here, assisted by her husband who just wandered about in the background. Their garden is still under construction and it was inspiring to see how they made use of what was available, naturally or otherwise. For example they had edged some beds with roof tiles left over after they had replaced the roof on the house. They were working on a larger scale than we are but we could see a clear connection.
The second garden we visited is owned by a really professional gardener, trained and very knowledgable, Monica Söderström. She owns a plant nursery and as well as her two gardens she works with garden design, courses in various aspects of gardening, and writes articles for gardening magazines! Her blog (gladigront.se - in Swedish) has an article describing how to move trees for example. It was really lovely to listen to someone with so much knowledge but she was definitely a different class of gardener to us!
The weather was a breezy 21°C day. Very different to the blazing heat of the last couple of weeks, but much more pleasant weather to be visiting gardens.
We finished off with a swim in a lake nearby, quite a way from home. There was a grassy area to lie on, a sandy beach, and two jetties to take you out to deeper water. There was enough room for the twenty or so families who were there to sit a comfortable distance from one another. Oh yes, there was a small shop selling ice-creams too!
Yesterday's (back)blip got posted today too.