Kailzie snowdrops

The second garden I visited last week was Kailzie – pronounced Kayli – and this time I was on my own.  There’s an honesty box at the entrance to the garden at this time of year, and £2.50 a small price to pay for an afternoon’s enjoyable browse along the footpaths. 

Once again there were snowdrops in all directions, along by the burn (stream),  

in the woodland,

 

 

in amongst the tree roots,

and alongside the winding paths,

 

 flowering in small clumps…

 

…and with the aconites…

 

…but ahead of the daffodils that were yet to bloom.  I expect they’ll be nodding beautiful yellow heads by now though.

I love wandering round Kailzie Gardens, and this time found a path through an old wrought-iron gate that I’d actually not spotted before.  It wound alongside an upper stretch of the burn, through trees and came eventually to a rather strange  avenue of trees, that didn’t seem to go anywhere in particular.  It was just “there”!   

Carrying on along the path, the walled garden came into view, and in front of the gate is the pond – full of leaves instead of water at the moment – and the fountain.  Out of season I think the walled garden is locked to allow work to be done.  There was certainly some activity amongst the flower beds and the sight of a wheelbarrow or two on the grass path, leading away from the gates.

I doubled back to the burn and followed it downstream again, passing the new shoots of what I think is the giant gunnera,

then looked at the Laird’s Walk  

 

 

with a rhododendron almost in full bloom – in March?

Behind me is the summerhouse where I suppose the Laird enjoyed a seat in the heyday of Kailzie – before the house went to wreck and ruin and had to be demolished.

 

This is where the house used to stand, on that large green space beyond the bridge.

You can get an idea of the view from the back of the house when you look at the picture above of the Laird’s Walk. -  the hills of the north side of Tweeddale – or this one looking over to Lee Pen

While I was taking photos I noticed someone crossing the front of the “old house” and walking towards the Petanque piste.  It looked like the someone was carrying a pouch of boules.  Tommy often practises at weekends, but this was Tuesday.  Curious I strolled across to have a look.  Sure enough!  There was Tommy by now getting organised on the piste to practise “shooting”.  You can see the ball has just left his hand, bound for the group of boules without hitting the ground in front of them.  This kind of play is useful when you want to knock your opponents’ boules away from the piglet - the jack, we’d say, but it’s a French game so the small ball to aim at is called le cochonet – the piglet!

We had a chat, and if my shoulder had been better I might have played a game, but no point in aggravating the problem any more, so I left Tommy to his practice and went to see if Jimmy’s tea-bar was open, as the tearoom that serves the beautiful beetroot and chocolate cake wasn’t!  Jimmy is there for the fishers who come to practise at the fishing loch.  Being a reasonable afternoon – not too bright, but calm – there were a few folk about.   You can see the gatehouses of the Kailzie estate behind the pond in the centre of the photo.  

My cup of tea at the tea-bar was most welcome before I finally headed back to the car for the drive back to Peebles.   It had been a very pleasant afternoon, which I hope to repeat soon when the daffodils will be properly out – maybe this week!

Talk again soon.