Starting to think about the garden

It's really quite worrying how well my tablet reads my mind.  For some reason I cannot fathom, it showed me an advert for a nursery yesterday evening, so today we took a trip down there. 

It's too soon to buy anything, but certainly not too soon to start thinking about our new garden.  It, like many that we have seen during our househunting trips, is a blank slate.  It has a mature hedge round it giving us privacy, though it's a shame the hedge is laurel rather than something more interesting, and a couple of currently unidentified young trees, but is otherwise just grassed.

We want to add lots more trees, shrubs, perennials and a wildlife meadow - not all at once, I hasten to add.  

The nursery we visited today is owned by a Dutch couple.  Reading their website last night, it sounded like the sort of place we would like to patronise - a small business.  There were no other people there when we visited today.  We were greeted by Gert, and when we told him we'd come down from Galway he offered tea and coffee made in their kitchen.  It was brought out by his wife, and we chatted about her horses and the cows that enable them to run the business as a farm, thereby benefitting from some EU funding.

A friendly couple, who were also able to withdraw and allow us to browse their stock.  Difficult to judge at this time of year, but the plants all looked well cared for, and there was a good range, including many items we could happily plant.

We were totally up front about our situation, explained that we were there to look, not buy.  They offered us the use of the toilet, we gratefully accepted.  The sun came out for a while.  All in all, a pleasant visit - we departed with photos, ideas, but no plants.

On the drive back we stopped at a roadside pub, had a late lunch, with live music in the background (first extra).

In other news, Casper is thriving, they are home, and Z sent a photo (second extra).  Z remains pretty sore, but is glad to get home.

Edit.  2 extras combined into a collage to free up extras.