Revisiting my Visit Seven from 2020

Back in February 2020 when celebrating seven years of my blog I set myself the challenge of visiting seven gardens that year. At the time Coronavirus was something that was happening in the world, but none of us quite knew how it would go, or how long it would go on for, so there was no indication that my garden visit challenge would, well, be challenged. But as we know, quite a lot changed and pretty quickly.

We did get to visit some of the gardens on the list in 2020, both before and as the restrictions eased, but we postponed our Lake District holiday for a year and so my Visit Seven was also delayed.

We had that Lake District holiday last summer - and it was great - so I thought I’d take a look to see how I got on with my Visit Seven challenge, and I realised that I’d been pretty poor in editing my photos, and discovered - and relived - our visit to Holker Hall this past few evenings.

There were some changes along the way too as we didn’t get to Yorkshire - that will hopefully be in our plans for this year. Our Yorkshire trip was for a wedding which is now expected to take place this year, but the holiday we’re hoping to tag on will be different so it may be a while before I can tick that one off my list. Like the bride and groom I’m hoping the wedding will go ahead - third time lucky as they are both saying.

Taking a look back at my Visit Seven for 2020

The dates shown are the dates of my post, not the date of the garden visit.

1. RHS Wisley, Surrey

  • The Giant Houseplant Takeover

2. RHS Hyde Hall, Essex

3. Houghton Hall, Norfolk

4. Nymans, West Sussex

5. Sizergh, Cumbria

6. Holker Hall and Gardens, Cumbria

  • Discovering stunning plants at Holker Hall, January 2022

X 7. Scampston Hall, North Yorkshire

  • I’m keeping this one on my list, we may make it there but it’s likely that we won’t. If we don’t then at some point I think there’ll be another trip to be planned.

So, slow and steady wins the race right?

That’s my mantra for this challenge clearly! I recommend all of these gardens, so if you’re close to any of them do try and get along and see for yourself. Let me know how you get on.

Two categories and I'm already at 94/100

I mentioned in my last post that I’d spotted @orgjenise’s challenge on Instagram, and that the first category of food drew me in. Over our New Year’s Eve dinner MOH and I had talked about how I’m a ‘things’ person and how he isn’t. I mean that’s ok, they say opposite’s attract but he was right when he said our kitchen cupboards were sometimes a bit of a discovery, so now you can see why I knew I should be in for this challenge.

I should add not all of my items so far have been food, I’ve picked up some other easy wins from around the kitchen and our main living space. Even so it’s a large number of things to identify with such relative ease. The subsequent prompts - especially toiletries and paperwork - are also likely to be, shall we say, profitable.

With life getting in the way the past few days, I’ve not kept up with all of the categories but I’m planning to cover those shortly. What number I’ll end up with I’ve no idea, but I’m confident I’ll surpass a hundred easily, even 200 could be an easy target. Remember in 2016 when I decided to try and get rid of 2016 items? This challenge feels more achievable, but who knows how close I’ll get to equalling this year’s number?

I’m not expecting every prompt to produce such large numbers, for example I’m relatively good at clearing out my purse, but I suspect I could find a thing or two that could be lost, so I might find some surprises along the way.

What I’ve already benefited from, apart from much tidier kitchen cupboards, is a sense of calm and achievement as well as discovering an unknown stash of vac-packed chestnuts, which I don’t think is a bad thing at all. Even MOH’s impressed with how tidy our kitchen cupboards are, though I suspect he’ll be less keen if the challenge moves towards his shed - and even if it officially doesn’t, unofficially it will, though getting him to count could actually be the challenge!

Wish me luck!

My top 10 posts of 2021

One of my start of year traditions is to look at the most viewed posts here last year, and this year is no different. Once again I’m sharing two lists again, the first of which shows the top ten posts created in 2021, the second list is the top ten posts created at any time.

So onto the top 10 posts created in 2021.

1 Eight years (and 1 month) blogging

Last year I was running behind time on marking my blog anniversary, and took the opportunity to reflect on eight things that had changed since the previous year, and how my life had altered during that part of the pandemic. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I thought we’d still be quite so in the thick of it, but we are. Hopefully we are at least on the start of the end.

2 A tale of two desks

After about a year of working from home, we decided to get ourselves a desk each - and here I look at how our desks show our different personalities. I don’t think anyone was really that surprised.

3 A new crochet project

A post sharing my enjoyment of my yarn advent calendar, and the plans for my project. That’s finished, and I enjoyed the box so much I got another one for the advent just gone - more to follow on that one soon.

4 Two footstools and a tassel

This post was based on a visit to the Long Gallery at Blickling in Norfolk, which is as its name suggests long, and full of some wonderful tapestry, which while clearly traditional has modern touches too.

5 Calm and swirls in the Mediterranean garden at Houghton Hall

Another Norfolk post has made it into this top 10, and a visit to a place I think we should go to more often - maybe this year we will.

6 A bathroom refresh

Back at the start of last year we finally acted on plans to update our bathroom and while when I wrote this post there was still a little time to wait, and of course a few twists and turns along the way, we did get our new vanity unit into use.

AREZZO WALL HUNG VANITY UNIT, VICTORIAN PLUMBING

7 City green spaces

By the time Easter came around last year, like many people, we were itching to get out and about. But unlike most people we decided to head into the City of London and walk around and around visiting many places that were common to us when we worked in town.

8 Irony and priorities

Finally in April and not without irony I shared my word of the year - which was in fact priorities - and looking back now had its moments, and was overall helpful, but see what I thought at the time.

Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash

9 A fascination with boxes

It’s not a bad fascination to have, well as long as the boxes are pretty! These past few months we’ve been collecting the more mundane cardboard sort for MOH’s mum and her house move. The ones in this post though are much prettier.

10 The Chinese Streamside Garden at RHS Bridgewater

I’m pleased to see a post from the new RHS garden make it into the top 10 - I’m sure I have plenty more to share from there. I’ve realised that photo editing is something I’ve been particularly bad at, which isn’t much use for when it comes to blogging about our visits.

I always find it interest to see which posts make it into the lists, and as I’ve said before as long as my blog reflects my life then I’m happy.

Now onto that second list

This list is posts created at any time but viewed in 2021, the year in brackets is the year it was originally posted - and it’s very similar to this list last year. For whatever reason these posts continue to attract views, I’m glad that some of our garden and our gabion baskets are in there.

  1. Filling our gabion baskets (2017)

  2. My IKEA hack: HOL storage table to laundry basket (2015)

  3. Let's talk Edwardian house decoration (2017)

  4. Softening our gabion seating area with plants (2017)

  5. Sean Murray's Great Chelsea Garden Challenge (2017)

  6. 52 Cookbooks #36: Beef in easy tomato sauce (2014)

  7. Three of the six show gardens at the Ideal Home Show (2016)

  8. Fabulous outdoor planters (and more) from Cox & Cox (2016)

  9. Blinds and shutters with Thomas Sanderson (2018)

  10. Circles, spray paint and another plan for my garden (2016)

So there you go, that’s these lists completed for another year. Tradition completed!

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