Sunday 21 September 2008

Oxford - the bloggers' big day out


What finer setting could you want for a real-world get together of garden-allotment bloggers than Oxford University's beautiful Botanic Garden? The tower looks like it's rising up out of that building but it's actually the Magdalen College tower on the other side of the road.

Apart from me there were: Bifurcated Carrots - Veg Plotting - Spadework - The Plot Thickens - Fluffius Muppetus - Soilman - Manor Stables Vegetable Plot - Mustard Plaster - Hills and Plains Seedsavers - The Real Seed Catalogue

And here we all are, assembled in the corner of this beautiful historic garden.

Guest speaker Ben from Real Seeds 'urns' the respect of the assembled bloggers as he shows the various points where crops were domesticated along the agricultural blue nylon timeline. Seen stretched out like this, it really brings it home to you how much history and how many centuries of work and care have gone into every seed we have today.

And he continued to enthral everyone with his knowledge and enthusiasm as we enjoyed lunch on the lawn, replete with multi-coloured tomatoes, apple pie and exploding cucumbers. In fact, Oxford University's vegetable collection wasn't half as diverse and exciting as the contents of Patrick and Steph's home grown tomato bowl.

Emma (Fluffius Muppetus) photographs Michelle (Veg Plotting) and Kate (Hills and Plains).

There's never any shortage of things to look at in the Botanic Garden ... like this incredible lily pond.

Or this rather nice banana leaf.

The greenhouses were somewhat bigger than mine ...

And the flower borders somewhat tidier...

And neither is my greenhouse overlooked by dreaming spires, but you can't have everything.

I still think we could teach 'em a thing or two about vegetable diversity.

Many thanks to Patrick for all the work he put into making this meeting a success and a pleasure.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great pics, Rebsie. It only occurred to me after I left that I should have brought the video camera. As it was, I brought the still camera... and forgot to take any pictures. So what with that and the early departure, I can't rate my performance as particularly scintillating!

Celia Hart said...

How wonderful that the weather co-operated and you could enjoy a picnic!!! I'm so pleased you all had a great time.

Best wishes
Celia

Kath said...

Sounds like a wonderful day - and one of the best for weather that we've had for weeks.

Joanna said...

I was really sad that a last-minute crisis (not v serious in the scheme of things) at home kept me away ... great pictures

Joanna

Anonymous said...

Rebsie,

lovely to meet you on Saturday. Photos are excellent. Yours is a Nikon? Was looking at the the D40,D60 and D80 on Jessops site as I'm looking to replace a F80. Did you get one of the packages?

Cheers
John

Misshathorn said...

Yes, what a nice day! Even my non-gardening partner found the talks interesting and we both enjoyed meeting everyone. If there is a 'next time', I think I'll come by train and stay a little longer.

VP said...

Lovely to meet you Rebsie and rediscover your blog. Your tomato seed saving instructions are very timely as I've just selected a few for seed saving - inspired by you and Ben's talk on Saturday :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Rebsie,

Great post and pictures, and it was really nice to meet you. I'm glad you could come.

What good luck we had with the weather!

Maybe we'll do it again next year.