Tag Archives: trees

Longstock Park Water Gardens

Just outside Stockbridge in Hampshire is a small village called Leckford. There is an estate there called Longstock, and the retail group John Lewis owns some (or maybe all) of the land. They have the farm and run a shop there but, if you walk down the hill from the nursery area (or drive if the walk doesn’t appeal), you come to the Longstock Park Water Gardens. This is an ornamental garden area around some ponds.

You have to pay to enter this area while the other areas are free to access. It isn’t too expensive, though. Then you are free to stroll around the area around the ponds and on to the islands that are scattered throughout and connected by little bridges (although there are one or two dead ends that require you to reverse course).

The are also some areas that take you away from the ponds and behind the trees so plenty to explore. This takes you closer to the River Itchen that winds its way through this valley. There is a wide variety of plant life throughout the gardens. We were there, there were some blossoms on the trees and lots of other blooms flowering. I imagine that the colours change a bit throughout the season. The tree shapes are really cool too. Here is a selection of images that I took as we wandered around. If you in the area, I would recommend it as a visit for an hour or two.

This Color in the Trees Will Always Make Me Think of Washington

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No lengthy travels for this photo. This was taken at the end of our driveway in Woodinville. The vibrant colors that the local trees have in the fall are really lovely. While our time in Washington is coming to an end, I will have great memories of the rich red foliage to take with me on our next journey.

Osborne House Gardens

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We made our visit to Osborne House in October of 2022 and the gardens have since made the news in the UK. One of the older trees fell in some bad weather so, while I don’t know which tree it was, it is possible I got a photo of it shortly before it met its demise. Always a shame when an old tree falls but such is the nature of things. We wandered around the grounds prior to going into the house. It wasn’t clear whether the weather was going to deteriorate so we figured we would do the outside stuff first while we knew it was okay.

It isn’t hard to see how Victoria liked the place. The grounds run down to the sea and the views from the house are really nice. There are trees and plants of all sorts of varieties so, if you know more about that sort of thing, I could quite imagine that you would have much to study. I just like looking at them so a simpler proposition for me.

We took one of the trails down to Osborne Bay. There was a little café down there so we could stop off and have a snack and some refreshments. It wasn’t that warm, but you can always find time for an ice cream if you want to! From the café, it was a straight walk back up to the house. There are some large planters along the path. Not sure how big something could be and survive in one of them, but I imagine a moderately sized tree would be fine!

Once you get close to the house itself, you get to the ornamental gardens. These were actually quite nicely laid out. That sort of thing doesn’t always do it for me, but I quite liked Osborne. However, there were some really odd sculptures scattered around near the house. Not sure what sort of imagery the sculptures of the day had in their heads but the hybrids of various animals and humans that they sculpted were very weird. They also suffered from the same thing of a lot of sculptures of their day- they had never seen the animals that they were recreating. There was a lion that looked more like a goofy character from a comedy based in a high school! We might have laughed at that one for a while!

Misty Trees Out of the Office Window

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On the colder mornings in Woodinville, it is not unusual for us to get mist and fog around our neighborhood. It is usually dark when I start work in my office but, as the sun comes up, it can illuminate the trees around me quite nicely. The mist must have been burning off to let the sun in but it was still shrouding the local trees and looked rather nice. I grabbed a camera near my desk and shot a couple of images of the trees behind the houses across from us and then returned to the day job.

Color Along the Wenatchee River

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We made a trip across the Cascades in October to see what sort of colors there were in the trees. Choosing when to go is tricky because the timing of the color in the mountains isn’t the same as it is near us. Things were very pretty as we headed across Steven’s Pass. One the run down to Leavenworth, the road is tucked up against the banks of the Wenatchee River. There are a few places on the otherwise narrow road where you can pull off. The colors were pretty intense in parts providing a focus for the eye of the viewer of the photos.

Washington Park Arboretum

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Wherever we live, we tend to end up at the arboretum and Seattle is no exception. The Washington Park Arboretum is near the university (and I think the university has something to do with managing it) and close to Lake Washington. We paid it a visit at the beginning of Fall with some hope of seeing a bit of color in the trees. The layout of the arboretum is rather long and thin so, while you have a choice of paths, you tend to make an out and back trip as you walk around.

We chose a good day to be there with the sun out and the colors shown at their best but we were either a little early for the full fall colors or the types of trees there were not the sort to turn too dramatically. This wasn’t a hindrance for us, though. Walking through the trees was really great and surprisingly peaceful given how many people were there. When we turned back, we took a larger path and that had a lot more people on it so maybe our choice of outbound trail was a good one for avoiding the crowds.

One end of the arboretum comes up to the lake. It is rather close to the SR520 bridge across the lake so not normally the most peaceful of spots. On this weekend, they were carrying out part of the rebuilding program on the bridge so it was closed one way and things were a bit quieter. Any other day, though, and I suspect that the noise would be rather obvious.

How to Get Your Family to Stand in the Middle of the Road

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We visited Bothell to look at the trees as I mentioned in this previous post. We weren’t the only ones though. As we came around the corner, a row of the trees was very intense in their red colors and plenty of other people had come out to check this too. Families were all over the place taking pictures. The best place seemed to be in the middle of the road. Consequently, groups of people were standing there taking their shots and, hopefully, avoiding getting run down!

Fall Foliage in Bothell

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The area around where I work has a lot of trees and they have turned out to be the sort of trees that get very colorful in the fall. It is really nice to be able to look out of my window and see such vibrant colors when the sun pops out (which it does do in the Pacific Northwest sometimes). I had driven down the road in the opposite direction to normal one evening and saw even more color so, when the sun was out one weekend evening, we diverted to the area so I could get some shots.

The richness of the colors is sometimes hard to represent with photos. They don’t always have the impact that being there had but hopefully some of these shots will give you an idea of how pretty the street was.

Davis Arboretum

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We took a day trip up to Davis to check out the arboretum. Running alongside the old Putah Creek, it has a range of different plants and trees along its length. With the university buildings stretching alongside the creek, the paths provide access to the students and staff of the university as they get where they need to be. Being, at least most of the time, away from the roads makes for a quiet and pleasant place to stroll. At the time we visited, it was a turning point for some of the plants. Fall had already done it work on some trees while others were still showing signs of color.

We weren’t the only ones appreciating the view. We passed a number of painters (whether they were part of a class or just like minded individuals I don’t know) who were capturing the scenes around them. I didn’t get to see whether any of them were particularly good but I hope they had a good time anyway. There was plenty of wildlife along the creek. Ducks were abundant, the occasional turtle showed itself, squirrels were everywhere gathering food for winter and some of the visitors had their dogs with them so no shortage of life.

Work was underway to reconfigure the flow of water through the creek. This is intended to freshen up the water, deal with some of the weed growth on the surface and promote some other wildlife activity. In some areas it was already showing results but the work was due to run into 2017 so it will be a while before the full effect is seen.

Yountville in Fall

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It seems like a long time ago that we were in the transition from summer to winter. Fall in California is a little later than in some other places but, even so, it was still a while ago. We spent a day up in the wine country back then and the colors in the trees and the vines were very nice. I think we had missed the peak of the color for the vines but, as I was walking around Yountville, the sun was bringing out some great color in the trees.

Driving in to town we had passed a great variety of colors so I decided to walk back down through the town to take a closer look. Everywhere I looked there was another tree with the leaves glowing in the light. It was great. Whether looking along the road or up through the foliage, you couldn’t help but stare at the vibrancy of everything. It is cool to get good sun when the colors in the trees are nice too. Sometimes in the past I have struggled with getting the best of fall colors when the light became flat while the trees were at their best. Not so this time!