My Birthday

There was nothing particularly special about my birthday this year, no big number or huge party, but we visited some rather lovely places that I thought you might appreciate, and that I would like to remember when I look back through my blog diary in a few years' time. 

I had swapped my day at work so that I could have it off and was joined by The Mother, brother and Baby F for the morning with a lovely breakfast at Bills in Lewes, followed by a walk to Southover Grange Gardens. It's really something special this time of year, and I often come throughout the year - especially after a trip to the dentist - to see how it changes. If you come earlier in the year, the Pampas grass is huge and fluffy, crowding over the dried up canal like a permanent explosion of featheriness; if you come later in the year, you may even see some water trickling through the canal itself. There's a rose garden, a clean cut looking box garden, a kind of wild and untamed garden, mowed lawns, borders, and then this beautiful strip of planted wildflowers!!

It was too pretty not to try and have some nice photos in front of. The burst of colours was really something with the red poppies, blue cornflowers, yellow and white daisies and whatever else was in there. Sadly there weren't that many bugs, bees and butterflies visible on it - there just don't seem to be that many around this year. 

There is a grange still here at Southover, but it is privately owned or operated, usually for weddings and things like that. My godmother got married here - as did the Rag 'n Bone man!

It's also where The Sussex Guild have a permanent shop so you can wander round and pick up beautiful art and craft pieces from local artists/makers. 

Baby F just likes rushing around it because of all the little pathways popping through hedges and borders. There are a lot of stone walls here as well, some of it from the nearby ruined Lewes Priory (you can also walk around what's left of it) which seems to have had its stone pilfered to build many different parts of Lewes, bits pop up all over the place. 

Once we'd wandered around the gardens enough we headed back to my parents so that Baby F could have a nap and then played there for the rest of the afternoon before going out for a birthday dinner at Pizza Express. I even got a free birthday pudding!

My birthday weekend continued with a trip to Michelham Priory House & Garden, owned by the Sussex Archaeological Society (who also manage Lewes Castle among other places). Incidentally there was a Jaguar and Classic Car show on at the same time which kept my uncle and cousins entertained, personally I'm not at all interested in cars - even the people who owned the cars didn't seem that bothered, they were all sat in deck chairs behind their vehicles just having a chat. Perhaps that's what it's all about. There were a few people polishing off imaginary specks of dust but mostly it just looked like a classic car carpark on the lawn. 

You can walk around areas of the priory, it's got a long 800 year history so there's lots to read about, and there's dress up for the little people. The best bit for me was the smells in the kitchen - a proper herby smell as if the Augustinian canons who founded the site had just finished preparing a meal for themselves - although I doubt they would recognise the place now as much was destroyed by the dissolution of the monasteries. The garden photographed above represents what the cloister would have looked like, through the use of a wooden pergola, but there isn't a cloister there now. 

It was also home to evacuees and Canadian troops during World War II so there's quite a bit about that part of the site's history too. 

We had hoped for ducks, as The Mother remembered there being a lot of ducks there and our small people love feeding them, but we think that the Jags scared them off as there wasn't a single duck there! However, we did spy this lovely Barn Owl having a nap in the glass lantern above the entry to the inside of the priory! I'm not sure how many other people noticed him and we aren't sure how he decided upon that as the best place to have a snooze - he didn't have much to hold on to and looked pretty wedged in there but hopefully he managed to get out ok. 

We had a picnic lunch, wandered around the gardens, drank coffee, wandered through the little craft market that was also there and then mooched round to my sister's house so that the boys could all play in the garden together - a proper family birthday weekend!