Gillyflowers

I have a friend Dasiy Debs who not only enjoys gardening and blogging but excels at the wonderful art of embroidery.  I have another friend Debbie, who loves visiting historic places and often sends me links to interesting information on face book.

Recently Daisy has posted a picture of her exquisite embroidery, straight from life, of a gillyflower.  This is the old fashioned name for what we now call pinks and carnations.  This reminded me of the time I spent as a volunteer in the new Elizabethan garden at Kenilworth Castle.  I remember the day they hoisted in the marble statue and set it up in the middle of the fountain.

Yesterday there was jousting at the Castle, and Mr S and I decided to have a walk over there.  We do this most times there is something on at the Castle and love to have a chat with the 'enactors' who are spending the time in the tents, cooking, and living, and putting on shows.  I usually take pictures and have posted about this from time to time.

This time I took a few pictures of some of the wild flowers in bloom along the way,  I thought the first clump of wild knapweed reminded of a carnation.  This clump was so good, that I shall return to gather a little seed as I think it would make a rather nice garden plant and it was being visited by bees too!

The Gilly flowers were doing their best after very heavy downpours of rain the previous day and in Kenilworth Castle Gardens captured some of the gillyflowers:

In a corner of one of the beds, the Sweet Williams were putting on a good Show.