Town Allotment

First Autumn Colours

One of the signs of autumn is the Berberis bushes changing. What fascinates me is the variation in colour. On some branches the berries have already turned red. On other branches the leaves have turned red but the berries are still yellow. Many branches are still green.

“The berries are edible, and rich in vitamin C, though with a very sharp flavour; the thorny shrubs make harvesting them difficult, so in most places they are not widely consumed. They are an important food for many small birds.” (So do birds not have problems with the thorns?)

Reading the Wikipedia article I was sort of amused by the comment that Berberis is a popular garden bush not only because of its colours, but also valued as crime prevention: “being very dense, viciously spiny shrubs, they make very effective barriers impenetrable to burglars. For this reason they are often planted below potentially vulnerable windows, and used as hedges and other barriers”. (True I suppose but goes a bit beyond the “usual” kind of facts one expects to find.)

We had a hedge of these bushes at one the houses we lived in when I grew up.

Apples

Old apple trees in dad’s garden still bearing fruit.

The Garden, At Last

The Garden in the Museum park, surrounded by a traditional wooden fence.

An artificial waterfall runs down the hill from the park to a lake below.
On the right a piece from last years open air exhibition – a “pool of tears”
(made from broken glass) hidden among the trees in the Garden.

“Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed. --- A river watering the garden flowed from Eden, and from there it divided…”
~Genesis 2:8, 10~

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse.”
~The Book of Revelation 22:1-3~

This ends my series from the outdoor exhibition Gates – The Dream of the Secret Garden.
The first post was published last Monday (9 August).

Gate to the Secret Garden - ‘Seed’

The Dream of the Secret Garden - ‘Seed’

He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches."

Matthew 13:31-32

This post is the 9th in a series that started last Monday, 9 August.
Tomorrow, we enter the Garden.

Gate to the Secret Garden - ‘Live Rust’ (Mosaic Monday)

The Dream of the Secret Garden - ‘Live Rust’

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
~ Matthew 6:19-21 ~

For Mosaic Monday visitors: This is the 8th post in i series from an exhibition.
For the introduction, go back to the first post from last Monday.

For more Monday Mosaics, go to Mary’s Little Red House.

Gate to the Secret Garden - ‘Vine’

The Dream of the Secret Garden - ‘Vine’

“People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously.
This is how character is built.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

For more information about the exhibition, see Monday’s post.

Gate to the Secret Garden - ‘Flowergate’

The Dream of the Secret Garden - ‘Flowergate’

“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus”

Isaiah 35:1

For more information about the exhibition, see Monday’s post.

Gate to the Secret Garden - ‘Sprouting’

The Dream of the Secret Garden - ‘Sprouting’

“At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down,
it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.”

Job 14:7

For more information about the exhibition, see Monday’s post.

Gate to the Secret Garden - ‘Song of Songs’

The Dream of the Secret Garden – ‘Song of Songs 4:12’

“You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride;
you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.”
~ Song of Songs 4:12 ~

*For more information about the exhibition, see Monday’s post.*

Gate to the Secret Garden - ‘Tradition?’

The Dream of the Secret Garden - ‘Tradition?’

Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved.
They will come and go freely and will find good pastures.
~ Jesus ~ (Gospel of John 10:9)

For more information about the exhibition, see Monday’s post.

Gate to the Secret Garden - ‘New Wave’

The Dream of the Secret Garden  - ’New Wave’

For more information about the exhibition, see Monday’s post.

Gate to the Secret Garden - ‘Skanseninspiration’

The Dream of the Secret Garden - ‘Skanseninspiration’

This is one of the gates at an outdoor exhibition of gates this summer in our museum park.

While the buildings in the museum park are all old ones, the gates in this exhibition are all new creations.  A number of artists were asked to make their own Dream Gate.

As it happens, the shared photo blog Soaring Through The World In Pictures, where I’ve been a member for about a year now, happens to have Fences and Gates as theme this week. So starting yesterday, I decided to share one gate per day on that blog. I did however also decide that I want to collect them all on this blog as well; I’ll just try not show the same gate on both blogs on the same day.

I’m starting here today with one gate that will not be appearing on the other blog (there were a couple of more gates in the exhibition than there are days of the week).

The name “Skansen-inspiration” refers (I think!) to a more well-known open air museum than ours: Skansen in our capital Stockholm, which also has a collection of old buildings .

I took more than one picture of most of the gates, and also of the name plates belonging to each one of them; and so I made one collage for each gate, showing it from different angles. In some of the pictures of the name plates, you will see my camera reflected ;) and also evidence of the fact that even though the sun was shining when I took the pictures, it had been raining earlier!

I hope you’ll enjoy the exhibition. I did!

Geraniums

Picture taken at a Garden Centre where I went to buy flowers for my balcony.

White House in White Garden

December Twilight