Francesca and I visited Monet’s Garden at Giverny on 29 April 2015. The garden was a mass of flowers, tulips of every colour, flowering Japanese cherry, lupins, irises blue and yellow, and pink feathery tamarisk. Downstairs in the house we saw Monet’s studio, and upstairs his bedroom, hung with reproduction paintings by his favourite artists, among them Cezanne and Renoir. The kitchen walls were lined with Japanese prints and painted two shades of dazzling yellow, with table, chairs and furnishings in yellow to match and blue willow pattern china contrasting the yellow just to make your eyes squelch knee-deep in colour. Afterwards, we strolled through the garden. The sun kept going behind clouds, which made the colours glow more brightly when it came back. We went to the water garden, accessed via a tunnel under the road, painted in the colours of the house and garden, pink and green. We saw the Japanese bridge, overhung with new green willow and flowering branches of wisteria. The waterlilies were not yet in bloom, but bronze-coloured on the water, like worn patches in an antique mirror. We sat looking across the lake to the bridge that was loaded with people as heavily as the garden with colour.
The music is Adrian Bell Bridge of Sighs
Cello, Adrian Bell – Guitar, Bob Smyth
Sheet music available from Poco Publishing
Two perfect days in May 2015 spent in Dedham Vale, staying at the Sun Inn, Dedham, and strolling the countryside around Flatford. The video thumbnail shows the place where John Constable painted The Hay Wain, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1821, but no one bought it. Today it’s one of the National Gallery London’s most loved paintings. Constable spent his boyhood in Dedham Vale. He went to Dedham school. His headmaster was Dr Grimwood. Dedham is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1085 as having a population of two hundred. The medieval Sun Inn overlooks St Mary’s Church, and is creakingly oak and golden. Coach wheels once clattered the cobbles under the inn’s narrow two-storey coaching arch. “I love every stile and stump and lane,” Constable wrote of Dedham Vale. And so did we.
The music is Adrian Bell A Lake and a Fairy Boat, originally for voice with lyrics by English poet Thomas Hood.
Cello, Adrian Bell – Guitar, Bob Smyth
Sheet music is available through Contact.