Blogtober 2022 - Day 29 ☕

Yesterday Jethro had his first visit to the bonsai nursery...despite that big yawn I think he enjoyed himself! Future bonsai boy in the making 🌳 It was his first outing wearing the hat I knitted and it's so cute but kept slipping down over his eyes haha. 

After the nursery we headed to Stone Lane Gardens where there was a sculpture exhibition on (turns out I didn't actually take many photos of the exhibition pieces oops, clearly more interested in mushrooms!) It was one of those magical sort of days where you stumble across somewhere new and it turns out to be a bit of a hidden gem! I'd recommend a visit if you're near Dartmoor, but the exhibition finishes at the end of October so perhaps wait until next year as it's an annual thing.

Stone Lane has National Collections of birch and alder trees. Here I am rocking Jethro to sleep in perhaps the most idyllic setting for a woodland nap:

After a(nother) picnic lunch on a well positioned picnic table, and after settling the baby into his cosy sling, we headed off to explore the garden. 

You know I can't miss a mushroom photo opportunity, especially when there is amanita muscaria about! 

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All in a row.

Some of the stone statues, like these deer, stand permanently amongst the trees:

Acorns and moss.

Ed in the silent space 🙏

Identifying trees.

Fallen leaves that look like confetti on the ground.

Another strange looking fungus (looks like purple minced beef lol). One day Ed and I will get round to becoming knowledgable mushroom hunters so we can ID them as well as just admire them! 😄

Humungous gunnera leaves are always fun:

And we we are, at the start of the sculpture trail. Or the end for us as we realised we'd done the whole winding route backwards 😆 but it didn't matter!

Before long we were back in the car, Jethro was hungry after his sculpture garden snooze and the grandparents consulted the map to plan the route to our final destination of Chagford. We almost didn't make it out of the carpark though when the car tyres were spinning and slipping in the mud 😯

Jethro's first cream tea experience (he agrees that although we are in Devon, the Cornish way is in fact the correct way), and my first time trying whortleberry jam. 10/10 delicious rating 👌

An excellent day full of Devon delights, I felt like a tourist even though I've lived here forever! 💛

P.S. Now that I've completed this post nice and early I've got the afternoon free to tackle my next job - making an apple crumble! 🍏