Post Comment Love 17 - 19 May

Hello there, and welcome back to this week’s #PoCoLo - a friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they will be removed from the linky, and if older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here this week we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

The weather has once again dominated talk in the UK, this time though not it being too hot or too cold, or even too wet - but the magnificence of being able to see the Northern Lights from our own back gardens, and there’s been some stunning pictures shared across social media.

They were visible above our village - and I’ve seen the photos thanks to the village Facebook group - but I didn’t get to see them first hand which was a shame. I did though capture this rainbow cloud taken in the early evening last Friday, just before it all started to go a bit cosmic, which is also a little bit awesome.

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Keep off the grass!

* I was invited to the press preview for and provided with a pair of tickets to Gardeners’ World Live so I’m marking posts from the show as 'Ad’ - as usual my views and opinions are very much my own. Be sure to check out all of my posts from the show.

Be prepared for something entirely different - and a beautiful border which I absolutely love. I don’t think it’ll be something we recreate here, although the yellow red hot pokers could be a contender!

This garden designed by James Fenneberg takes the brief of ‘my garden escape’ to an entirely different level. He has designed a space which transports you through his choice of plants and materials. Agaves with their texture thorns feature prominently and symbolise ‘the sense of protection he wanted to create in his border’, and the results are stunning.

In addition James was also inspired by our ever changing climate to create a drought tolerant design which also features repurposed volcanic sand and rocks to create an ecological habitat for insects. And the weather on the day we visited the border couldn’t have underlined his message any more. We spent some time chatting with James and remarked how he was noticeably less flustered than some of the other garden designers who were watering the plants in their gardens so that they would look their best for the duration of the show.

Not so for James though, that’s definitely a design element that paid off - and one that I think we will all need to incorporate more and more into our garden spaces. Though if it means having sculptural plants like this, then it would be relatively easy to get on board with that wouldn’t it?

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was as fabulous as ever!

The loos in the bank vault

Yes that’s right, and it’s definitely a first - even for me - but it was kinda fun, and very well done. Before we get to the loos though, we were in Nottingham for a visit to the opera, like you do. Well we don’t that often actually, it’s probably only our third or fourth opera and it was a fabulous production of Romeo and Juliet by Northern Ballet. It was our first time in the Theatre Royal, which was a lovely old theatre and completely in contrast to the Concert Hall which we’ve been to many concerts and productions in before.

Before the opera though we went for pizza - we’d seen a restaurant we wanted to try on a previous visit, and then neither of us could remember its name or where it was. But, after some internet searching we found it and so found ourselves enjoying pizza and mocktails in Rudy’s Pizza admiring the architecture, the high ceilings and the plasterwork and so much more.

How beautiful and grand is it? It’s definitely a statement of wealth and prestige. So even before my visit to check out the loos we knew we were sitting in an old banking hall - we’ve both been in a fair few of those in our time working in the City!

The thickness of the wall and doorway into the Ladies confirmed the prior use of the building - the thickness of the wall confirmed this was a previous bank vault.

And the safe’s doubly confirmed it!

It makes total sense to leave them in situ - as not only will they be heavy (to say the least) they’re huge and more than likely would struggle to get out of the vault, and they definitely wouldn’t have got up the stairway I went down. The ladies cubicles were built around the safe, sadly though I wasn’t able to look inside the one with half a safe in so I’m not sure if it was visible inside or not. Though I’ll happily go back and try another time as the pizzas were pretty good too!

So quite a different vibe here, but one that reuses a space creatively and with a nod to the building’s heritage - and another post in the Loo Series, which just a week or so ago I wasn’t sure when the next one would be! And I’ve another one to share too, but I’ll save that one for a moment.