Thursday, July 24, 2008

Not in Provence

As a kind of follow up to the hopping story a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be interesting to show what’s been happening in some of the fields in Kent in recent years.

I had heard that lavender was being grown here, but it was kind of theoretical only; I’d never actually seen any until coming down to Kent on the train from London, I passed by an amazing vision. Three or four consecutive fields, stretched out and undulating away from the railway track, were Lavender fields in full bloom. Several of us on the train exclaimed out loud at the shock of seeing such an image from the train. I jotted down in my notebook the name of the station that we went through next so that I could look up where it was with a view to driving out to take some pictures.

Lavender, with all its old lady connotations, has always been one of my favourite smells. Not only has it a divine aroma, but it’s also soporific, and ever since my children were tiny I would drop it on their duvet or pillow to help them sleep.

Husband and I drove out to Castle Farm the day after we got home from Manchester and I talked all the way about where I envisaged us living when we moved back from Thailand. Poor Husband, he had no idea where my fantasy planning had taken me and he had an awful lot of catching up to do.

Every time I look at these pictures I can smell a wonderful whiff of lavender: divine.

10 comments:

Pacha said...

How absolutely beautiful. Lovely lovely photos. Makes me sigh and relax just looking at them!

Jenny Beattie said...

Pacha, Hi honey, thank you. It's stunning - so odd to see that colour in patches all over the countryside. I may have to live near there!

Angie said...

JJ, that is gorgeous! I could live near that as well. How relaxing would that be?
LOL at your planning comment. My poor hubby struggles to keep up with my fantasy planning as well.

Leigh Forbes said...

Blimey, that must be: Kent, le jardin d'Angleterre, non?

Carol said...

Those pics are absolutely stunning - The colour is really quite amazing isn't it!! I can understand why you would want to live there.....but what about the houses with the pointy roofs??

C x

Jen said...

Wow, it that purple field looks like some crazy Photoshopping incident.

Must investigate... there's a lavender farm in Jersey that was brilliant for a stroll with fractious children... must investigate. I had no idea Kent had such hidden treasure.

Lucy Diamond said...

Oh, how beautiful. I love lavender too. That must be the nicest-smelling farm in the world!

Mel said...

I literally did a loud exclamation of "wow"!! Stunning...must have smelt like heaven!

Kate.Kingsley said...

Wow! Absolutely gorgeous!

I love lavender (even though my mum says it smells like old ladies....)

:-)

Liane Spicer said...

Wow! Beautiful! How on earth do they get it to grow like that? Where's the greenery?