Today was a busy exciting day for me, I was up early this morning and out with the dogs at around 6.30am, it was a pleasant morning, still, no wind and dry underfoot. During the dog walk I received an unexpected telephone call from one of my sons, who lives just outside of Northallerton to ask if I had checked my mobile phone this morning, at this point I had to say that I hadn’t, he went on to say that my first granddaughter had been born earlier this morning and that he had posted some pictures of her for me to see. Baby was some four weeks early, so this caught us all by surprise, anyway mother and baby are both doing fine. Wow, what a start to the morning.

I rushed home to tell Jenny who by this time was up and about and had already checked her phone whilst I was out, so knew the good news before I did.

After breakfast we had an appointment in Harrogate mid-morning and afterwards headed over to the gardens at RHS Harlow Carr for a walk and brunch.

It was about 11.30am by the time we reached the gardens, the sun was out, the temperature was a coolish 12C which was quite cool for that time of the day and rain was forecast. As usual it was surprising busy for mid-week, but we popped into Bettys on our arrival for a biscuit and take away coffee before we passed through garden entrance, turning left and headed towards the learning centre and lakeside gardens. One of the reasons for visiting today was to try and find the huge ‘four Season sculptures,’ we found two of them on our last visit, so today, no matter what, I was going to find the other two.

We popped in to have a look at the Edwardian Garden for a few moments, A beautiful bronze statue of Alice in Wonderland (by Robert James) stands at the head of the pond, looking up to the stars, hands outstretched, it is and looked very lifelike. The colourful summer planting around the raised beds of the pond is dying back slightly but the Autumnal colours are looking equally as nice. From here we continued our walk passing ‘Diarmuid Gavin’s Garden’ on the right.  The moon gate frames a peaceful garden and planting includes a specimen Catalpa tree, tree ferns and cottage-garden plants. The interior planting has matured well and the Pseudopanax ferox is now throwing its slender spires over the top of the gate, it was looking extremely pretty today with the sunlight glistening on the trees.

Some of the grasses along the borders were looking beautiful, gently swaying in the light autumnal breeze. We continued our walk around the QM lake but this time, instead of taking our usual route along the ‘streamside walk’ we followed the route a little higher up the slope, passing the Children’s play area on the left. This path runs parallel to the Streamside walk and ends up at the old ‘Bath House’, after a couple of minutes we found one of the four statues, on the left-hand side amongst the trees. Standing at four and a half metres tall the fibreglass heads are three-dimensional interpretations of Renaissance paintings created by Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo in the late 16th-century. They are an extraordinary collection of busts inspired by the seasons and created by contemporary American artist and filmmaker Philip Haas. The exquisitely detailed pieces imagine spring, summer, autumn and winter in human form, rendered in exuberant and thought-provoking arrangements of seasonal fruit, vegetables, flowers and crops, I have yet to work out which sculpture represents which season! A little further along the footpath we found our fourth sculpture, they are quite remarkable, and you do have to stop and stare a while to work out all the bits and pieces. We continued along the path to the ‘old Bath House’ were there was an arts and crafts exhibition taking place. Passing ‘Betty’s Tea House’ we continued up the slope towards the Kitchen Gardens and Alpine House. The Alpine House was quite busy with visitors today, so I headed off along the main borders down to the stream. Work looks to be getting underway to reshape and design these borders and pathways during the Autumn so it will be interesting to see and watch the changes taking place over the next few months. The Colours of the trees and borders in the autumnal sunlight looked quite amazing today, what a lovely way to spend a couple of hours.