Tag Archives: Winston Churchill

Blenheim Palace Park and Gardens

On Thursday September 22nd after a early morning walk on the Blenheim Palace grounds and lunch we returned for a self-guided tour of the courtyards of the palace, the water terraces, the Churchill Memorial Garden, the Rose Garden, and the Grand Cascades.

The Churchill Memorial garden needs some freshening up. It was interesting to walk the path that had engravings in the stone to mark different important dates in his lifetime.

1900 Member of Parliament, 1902 Edward VII Crowned, 1905 Under Secretary, 1908 Marries Clementine, 1910 Home Secretary, 1911 George V crowned, 1914 WWI Starts, 1918 WWI Ends, 1924 Chancellor of Exchequer, 1933 Marlborough Published, 1937 George VI Crowned, 1939 WWII Starts – First Lord of Admiralty, 1940 Prime Minister, 1945 WWII Ends – Election Defeat, 1951 Prime Minister, 1953 Elizabeth II Crowned – Knighthood – Nobel Prize, 1955 Resigns as Prime Minister, 1963 Made US Citizen, 1964 Leaves Parliament, 1965 Buried at Bladon.

The Rose Garden which is usually in it’s prime in late June, early July. We were here in September so way past it’s prime.

This patch is filled with the Jubilee Rose.

The Grade 1 Listed Rose Garden is contained within a circular walk, surrounded by blue cat mint and arched over by slender hoops supporting climbing white roses. At its centre is a fountain within a circular pool and surrounded by symmetrical beds; each filled with a variety of different roses.

Here’s a photo I found to show what it looks like in it’s prime.

The Grand Cascades September of 2022.

The Grand Cascades in April of 2004 on a trip to England with our daughter.

The brown section on the bottom right of the map is the village of Woodstock. The rest of the map shows the grounds of Blenheim Palace, over 500 acres. We walked the upper circular path to the Grand Cascade and back to the palace and then back to Woodstock. We should have used a pedometer on this trip to log the steps we ended up with! The Feathers Hotel in Woodstock is where we stayed for two nights. The marked yellow path is where we walked early in the morning to see the Harry Potter Tree. That was a separate post.

Back to the Present: We had a new covering of snow over the weekend and more is predicted for later today into tomorrow. It’s always fun to see some distinct paw prints in the snow (feral cat). On Sunday our church body had a time to grieve together over the passing of our dear church secretary of many years with our pastor sharing some great stories about her and their working relationship before our service. Today we have to head out early for Dear to meet his new Primary Care Doctor. Hope you all have a good week.

The Kneelers ~ Woodstock

One of my favorite things to do when traveling is to walk through the older churches and cathedrals. This is the easiest when traveling in England because there are so many and they seem to be more readily open to visitors. One of the things that has stood out when walking through are beautifully stitched kneelers. At St Mary Magdalene in Woodstock there are over 200 kneelers! That is the most I’ve seen anywhere in my travels and visits to churches.

The brochure I picked up in the church about the kneelers was photographed so I could share the information easier for my record here. I was going to make collages of the kneelers that caught my eye but after reading about all the work involved in creating one of them it seemed to me they were worthy of being presented singly.

Here is the church tower kneeler, the Winston Churchill and one I think might be part of the Blenheim Connection

The following give honor to the Lord, the Bible and Prayer.

Then we move on to more community minded themes…

 

And from the state where Dear and I were born and raised. We were surprised when we spotted the California Kneeler.

That’s just a small sampling of the kneelers during our visit on Wednesday September 21st, 2022.

Do you enjoy needlework?

Back to the Present: On Sunday we enjoyed our Sunday services and made a stop on the way home to buy some Deli Salads to go with the 2 racks of ribs we put in the oven. The ribs were pre-seasoned from Costco and turned out fall off the bone delicious. We watched the first half of the Super Bowl game and then hit the record button. Since 2 racks of ribs are more than we could eat, we dropped a rack off at our Colville kids for their dinner before we headed to our Evening service at church. Back at home after church we watched the last 10 seconds of the game and saw that the Kansas Chiefs won. Congratulations to them. I’ve got to say that I really didn’t understand half of the commercials and we didn’t watch the half time show. We got a text with photos of our Grands enjoyed the ribs!

Ribs enjoyed in two households for the win!

Back in the USA!

We said our goodbyes to our British friends and made the journey home on Saturday. Our flight took an hour longer than usual because of weather over Greenland that diverted our flight path over Canada instead of the arctic path, 10 hours instead of 9. Customs in both London and in Seattle have really been simplified. We are resting up at our ‘Coast Kids’ home. Thankful that they could pick us up at the airport and house us. We will be driving the 5ish hours home on Monday. Looking forward to being home again soon.

Blenheim in April, 2004

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Before we left Oxfordshire on our daughter’s literary graduation gift tour in April of 2004 we stopped by Blenheim Palace.

Blenheim Palace is home to the 12th Duke and Duchess of Marlborough and birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. I’m sharing a few photos with quotes from Churchill and one from the Bible.

Winston Churchill was born here in 1874. “At Blenheim I took two very important decisions; to be born and to marry. I am content with the decision I made on both occasions…”

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“Never was so much owed by so many to so few…”

We were really taken aback by the grandeur of these Cedars of Lebanon that were planted on the grounds. We had Katie stand beside it to give some perspective…

img404The Lebanon cedar (Cedrus libani) is a conifer that originates from, as its name might suggest, Lebanon and surrounding areas in the Middle East. Original old growth groves of this tree, that is mentioned in the Bible, are now very rare. This tree can live for thousands of years and became a popular exotic specimen tree in European landscape gardens in the 18th, 19th century.

Psalm 92: 12-15 (ESV)

12 The righteous flourish like the palm tree
    and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
13 They are planted in the house of the Lord;
    they flourish in the courts of our God.
14 They still bear fruit in old age;
    they are ever full of sap and green,
15 to declare that the Lord is upright;
    he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

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“You have enemies? Good. It means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.”

We enjoyed our time at Blenheim and toured the grand home with all the amazing artwork and furniture and walked about a small part of the 2100 acres landscaped by Capability Brown!

Now…back to the present. We are thinking about quarantines at this old house as Dear’s ick seems to be spreading to the rest of us here. Oye and Ugh! Hope you are sore throat free and living in a non-coughing zone!!