Houses and gardens in times of Covid

Yesterday, on a warm and windless day, we went with the family to Jupiter Artland, an outdoor sculpture park just outside Edinburgh. It's in the grounds of a manor house. This is the owners'  swimming pool - not, sadly, open for visitors' use; indeed, we've only been allowed to see it on the last two occasions. As you can see, the pool is an artwork in itself. 

This is the very impressive house. The original house was built in 1622, added to over the years and completely remodelled in the Jacobean style in 1858, so most of it is not nearly as old as you'd think from this picture. All the turrets must be spoof. The current owners bought it and its estate in 1999 and made it into the sculpture park - they live in the house and have a private garden (and pool). 

The art is not what you'd choose to have on your walls - like this, which looks like a traditional cottage but is relatively modern. You step in the door and find that the walls are built directly on to an uneven outcrop of stone (or, a facsimile of one). 

This is a fishing net or similar, strung between trees. 

There are various artificial terraced hills, fun to run around. 

This is called The Lovebomb, and despite its rather eerie appearance it's actually made of hugely enlarged photos of various bits of orchids, attached to one another. I assume it's the seed-bearing parts, hence the name. 

It's all a bit odd but the children really like it. Mainly, it's just a lovely walk round a partly-wooded estate, with far-reaching views and strange things to look at in places. 

 As far as beauty is concerned, my garden is just as lovely at the moment, but a lot smaller and I don't think I could charge people to come and admire it. 

No one came forward to buy our items so I changed the £20 to Free and there was much more interest, which says something about human nature. However, it's fine. The filing cabinet and the corner cupboard have gone and the desk has a queue of three people wanting it - the first to ask for it can't collect it till Thursday so we'll wait and see if she does, and if not we'll ask the second in the queue and failing that the third. 

As we knew we would have to, we now have to empty four Billy bookcases and move them about an inch and a half to the left, to make room for the bunk beds we're putting on one side of the study for future small guests. It does seem slightly futile, to make our study much less useful as a study just to accommodate guests - will we ever have guests again? The bunks will only ever be used a handful of times, I suppose. But still, for those times, I hope they'll be useful.