Can't see the wood...

Remember I said we'd been to the Wood Fair? Ages ago? Yeah you do.
In the absence of anything much making me smile today, I thought I'd tell you all about that instead.

It was held at the Larmer Tree Gardens, where we also recently went to the End of the Road festival, and had a mighty fine time.  The Larmer Tree Gardens are home to:

Peacocks

and (I think) Macaws:

Look closely - they're perched up on a branch in the middle there.  Boy do they make a racket.

The Gardens themselves were designed in the nineteenth century as a formal pleasure garden, and there are follies and strange little buildings scatted throughout.

This one has the name Pitt Rivers, of archaelogical fame, engraved over the door.  I have no idea why. I daresay if you check out the link above to the Gardens website it will tell you, because I certainly can't.  Sorry. 

This one makes me think of Bavarian beer, for some reason.  Or possibly sausages.  And gingerbread.

This one's my favourite.  It's a teeny little stage with an incongruous tropical backdrop.  Why?  Ask the Pitt Rivers'.

This is the Pitt Rivers one again, from further away.  I know all the technical photography terms, me.

Anyway, it being October, I took some pictures of the trees and shrubs. Here they are:

I know the last one is an oak tree, but have no idea about the rest.  This is not really an educational post, is it? 

Anyway, the actual Wood Events were varied and mildly entertaining. We bought a bee house, which is supposed to give bumble bees somewhere safe to live over the winter. We chatted to a charcoal maker, and bought a bag of this:

I sniggered unattractively at this, and had to take a sneaky photo while the charming old gent manning the stall's back was turned:

I like the idea that it is specifically for the Hampshire pimps. None of those flashy London types. Or even the New York ones. No, just Hampshire.

The climax of the day, though, was the didgeridoo workshop. I recorded a few minutes of it but can't upload it on here, as it's not a video. However, if you look at the pictures, I daresay you'll be able to imagine just how impressive it sounded.

Twenty or so people, adults and children, all trying to make noises like kangaroos hopping, or snakes slithering, or dingoes barking, through twenty or so didgeridoos, while the loud, cheerful chap running the workshop scampered about from person to person, encouraging them and playing his own didgeridoo to show them how it was done.

When they were doing the dingo barking part, every dog within earshot started barking too. I almost choked, I was laughing so hard.

Feel the power of the didge.....