A Duck's Diary from the Jinney Ring Craft Centre

Just some of the stuff that I see here!



Tuesday 20 September 2011

Garden back to normal

The sculpture trail has ended and customers are collecting their purchases with the remainder going away with the artists - feels odd to have the garden so empty again, particularly with Autumn in the air and the leaves falling too!
Wire Owl by David Metcalfe

Once again the most popular pieces in the sculpture trail were the birds --this is completely unsurprising to us.  All of the recycled metal birds have found a new home and so have several of David Metcalfe's wire owls.  Top Glass (glass blower in the centre) made a range of glass birds in various colours which will brighten the garden too - these also sold well and more will be available after the end of the trail.

My duck friends admiring the glass birds (Top Glass)
One of the nicest stories heard in the garden was a young couple who purchased the copper lilies on Sunday (made by Jo Floyd pictured on the Duck's diary 25th Aug) - the lady was heard to admire the piece as she had had Cana Lilies in her wedding bouquet -  they were just approaching their second wedding anniversary so they bought the piece - it is lovely, we do hope they enjoy it for a good long time!

Talking of anniversaries - we had a 5th Wedding Anniversary party here in the restaurant this Saturday night - a lovely crowd, all very well dressed, they had a nice meal and a good long chat. Despite being locals, many of the guests had not been here before and had certainly not realised what lovely gardens we live in - we hope to see them again soon.

Sunday 11 September 2011

Autumn blowing in

Gosh it has been blowy this week - the garden is quite open, so it felt quite fierce, but not cold.  Sadly the wind blew the gazebo to bits on Monday and the lovely clay horse sculpture from Paul Michael Langford was also blown over - he was not too upset though as it was always intended to be a temporary thing, and was only expected to last a short time when the rain came.  It was a lovely sculpture though - he is talking of making one in bronze next year.

With the children retuning to school this week and the change in the weather we have been a bit quieter and can return to leisurely swimming rather than identifying the best customers to chase for food!  The most exciting thing to happen this week has been the 4 ducklings in the pen being allowed out - they went mad - we have never seen ducklings move so far so fast they went right down to the bottom pond on the first day (it normally takes a couple of weeks for them to pluck up courage for this!). But the best fun was watching the humans trying to get them off the pond at the end of the day, so that they could return them to the safety of the pen for the night -  it took many attempts!  These ducklings are smart though - last night they returned to the pen of their own volition - they have worked out where the food is now!

You may remember that these four have a mum and a couple of siblings on the pond (see earlier diary note) and we speculated as to whether she would recognise them when they came back -- she did not and was very careful to ward them off the much smaller siblings (they have not been eating as well as the ones in the pen!)
This Saxophonist by Alan Ross is part of trail

Sculpture trail ends next Sunday.  Next event on the books is Wine tasting on 30th September.

Thursday 1 September 2011

Scarecrows or Scareducks?

Yesterday we had a real scare -- some additions to the sculpture trail but this time they actually moved -- not fast but we definitely saw them move.

A Scarecrows picnic/tea party was set up in the garden (which is a bit ironic really as there are NO PICNIC signs up everywhere... I guess they can't read...) and four "Scarecrows" arrived as part of the sculpture trail.


The "Scarecrows" are local lad and trainee Thespian Joel Davidige, and his friends who are sparing a little time in between rehearsals for their show "In Short" at the Artrix this Saturday.


Accompanying their tea party, they had a Jo Lucas who turned up to busk in the gardens today, beautiful music to swim to!


Tomorrow, 2nd Sept, within the Sculpture Trail programme, Paul Michael Langford is back to finish his clay horse sculpture at the bottom of the garden - he is wonderful to watch - we are looking forward to seeing him again.