and found us travelling along this narrow lane where two cars could not pass,
but we made it in the end to Broadview Garden Center, and the good news was that the garden center shares the site with Hadlow College, so not only are the vast majority of plants for sale grown as a part of the agricultural college courses, the garden is also planned and maintained by students who can take courses up to and include BSc (Hons) accreditation,
first we had a quick look around the sales area, rather nice lilies,
and unusual quinces were just a couple of the huge number of plants offered for sale,
the selection of garden ornaments was large,
from owls,
to leaping lizards,
and butterflies,
and the Christmas decoration,
were a pleasure to look at, time to look at the garden,
but first our late breakfast, or I should say lunch, a cheese and ham toastie for Diana, a salmon sandwich for myself,
in the garden centre restaurant,
we followed with,
you guessed it, current scones with jam and fresh cream, the total came to £20.50,
then coat on and out,
to look at the first display we came to, dahlias,
although chilly at night,
these were still in flower,
and the flowers were huge,
and had so many varieties on show,
swings, well Diana just had to have a go!
I settled for a pose,
we made our way through the various gardens each one separated by a hedge,
then Diana saw them, grapes,
but these were not for eating, in fact they tasted sour, this variety is used for making wine,
I had to pose at the ornamental pool, which quite frankly was a huge disappointment, it looked totally unkempt, apart from a few strands of elodea, and bug eaten waterlilies it appeared devoid of life,
I decided to set up the infrared and normal cameras,
and took a couple of photographs,
of ornamental grasses I had brought the normal camera along and set it up next to the infrared, we were looking forward to seeing the lake, especially as the college offers fisheries management courses,
this is how the pond looks in the brochure, of course the iris will not be in flower, but the trees reflecting in the water should make for a few nice photographs,
in reality, at the first viewing clearing in the path surrounding the pool, this area of the pool was totally covered in duckweed,
no chance of seeing a reflection of the trees here,
walking around it was not as bad as it seemed only 30% of the lake was covered,
but I would have thought that to control the weed a few grass carp or other duckweed controlling fish could have been introduced, but the pool did not appear to have any fish, not even a duck or moorhen inhabited the pool, a bit of a disappointment really, but there it is,
we made our way back to the car,
taking a slightly different route,
through the avenues that separated the individual gardens,
and past the red-hot pokers, (Kniphofia), that were putting on such a nice display, we made the drive towards home, but on the way I dropped Diana off at work,
where I after my evening meal I made a move upstairs to play infrared, these from one of our visit to Santorini,
color swapped,
and some of the photograph made a tad brighter,
I then decided this evening I would be in blue mode, the colour not the mood,
back to black and white,
and lastly an antique look,
we went island hopping in a boat similar to this,
color swapped,
tweaked just a tad,
and in to blue mode again, I thought I would give the boat some colour to make it stand out,
black and white,
and finally antique,
just after midnight Diana called, so a quick walk to the the bus stop, then home, feet up for one from Peaky Blinders, a coffee, a chat and we were off to bed.
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