Malleny Garden

The world and his wife, kids, bicycles and dogs were all out today, which meant that parking spaces at our destination of Red Moss were oversubscribed and we ended up at Malleny Garden instead. 

Main blip is a door in the walled garden: I love the detail of mythical beasts on what could have been such a plain surface. Even the closer has a hand operating the bolt. Further decoration appears at the house on what could have been a simple barred window. There are other examples of quirky metalwork elsewhere in the garden that I have blipped previously. We admired the sundial, said to date from 1700, on its plinth of ashlar (extra 1).

After the walled garden we wandered through the trees, with carpets of snowdrops, and lots of mud, taking the photograph of the rhododendron as we returned to the car, the visiting buff-tailed bumble bee evading the lens (extra 2)

On the way home we called in on the Saturday market in Balerno, buying one or two items for lunch, arriving just as the dark cloud delivered its load after a bright, but chilly, morning.