Amelia's photos

This is one of the few octagonal working dovecotes in the country, dating back to the early 1750s. It was restored in 1937 by R.W. Ketton-Cremer. It is constructed of brick with a shingle roof and is octagonal in plan. There is a doorway in the south face. The wooden octagonal turret has louvres to each face with a glazed semicircular head, timber cornice and a lead bell-shaped dome with a weather vane. Internally there are approximately 2000 nest holes in rows, with brick bands between the rows.

I am away for a few days, but will be back on Monday next week. Happy Valentine's day to you all.

A ha-ha also known as a sunk fence, blind fence, ditch and fence, deer wall, or foss, is a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier (particularly on one side) while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond from the other side. Ha-has are used in landscape design to prevent access to a garden by, for example, grazing livestock, without obstructing views. In security design, the element is used to deter vehicular access to a site while minimizing visual obstruction.

Ton sur ton can be translated into English as Matching tones.

The gorse takes precedence.

Carpets of snowdrops in the grounds of Chirk Castle.

The hazel has both male and female flowers on each shrub, and the two flowers are quite different. The male flowers are gathered within the long, breeze-blown catkins and these are by far the most prominent. Each catkin is made up of many individual flowers – these are the small green/yellow male flowers which produce the pollen. The hazel is wind pollinated and the pollen from the catkins blows to reach the female flowers which you would never spot unless you looked carefully – they are tiny individual flowers, visible only as red styles protruding from a green bud-like structure on the same branches as the male flowers. Once pollinated in the springtime, the female flowers set to work producing the hazelnuts which ripen in the autumn.