Sun 27.Jun.2010
Prague, Czech Republic
Well... from bucolic rural England to the bustling Paris of the East
(or Vienna of the North, take your pick) in one swell foop! We
still have some England pictures to go though, so let's get started.
Stourhead Gardens
I had only ever heard of Stourhead
as an ale, but Barbara insisted they are a famous garden. As usual on
this sort of thing, she was right: a garden in the sense that Yosemite is a valley.
Called day lilies, because each blossom
blooms for only a day. That is what a sweet old fellow visitor lady
told me
Chalice
Garden
The Chalice Garden in
Glastonbury is dedicated to quiet contemplation. A lovely place,
centered around a spring so rich in iron content that it leaves behind
reddish deposits on everything it flows over.
As fortune would have it, our visit ocurred on the peak day of the
annual Glastonbury music festival, which actually meant that the crowds
in town were lighter than is usual in Summer. A hundred and fifty
thousand or so people were at the fairground a few miles out of town.
A young woman playing a tar drum - quiet subtle polyrhythms, very in
charater for the moment and the garden.
The fictional Quickbeam may have looked
like this.
This double-circle motif is logo and leitmotif, recurring throughout
the garden.
Here is the famous iron-rich spring water, gushing from a fountain
slightly below the spring source.
Visitors drink the water, using the glass provided. That much iron is
probably destructive to a damaged liver, so Yrs Trly forbore the ritual.
I did partake of the peaceful, contemplative quiet. This quiet has its
own music.
Transition
These pictures show a wall on the streets of Glastonbury, between the
Chalice Garden and the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, which will feature
prominently in the next post... unless I get distracted.
See you all soon.
Contents Copyright 2012 Jeff Bulf