Mrs. de Winter and Alice's daughter

A string of long weekends and short working weeks have been making me lose track of time again, so that I find myself on the slippery slope of lagging behind once more. Honestly, I haven't been deliberately shirking my blogging duties! I really haven't got the faintest idea where the time goes these days.

All I know is that I left you at the end of the first week of May, with a weekend filled with wedding celebrations and a flea market.

After three days on the office hamster wheel in the second week of May, we were the lucky recipients of yet another public holiday - Ascension Day - on Thursday the 9th.  As usual, most people were taking Friday off as well, and this year, of course, there was no question at all of yours truly having to go into work. 

If the weather forecast was to be believed, we'd be in for a treat: it looked as if Spring had finally got the memo!  For a start, Thursday was dry - which is a major miracle these days - and mostly sunny with moderate highs of around 20°C.

We had been sorely remiss in our household duties as well, so that we needed to spend the morning chasing away an army of dust bunnies upstairs before we could treat ourselves to a walk in the park.

The dress I wore that day was a Think Twice sales bargain back in  March 2019, when its mix of solid green and white on green chevrons instantly caught my eye.

As we didn't take any close-ups of my outfit while we were out and about, here's a picture of "the stuff", as Sheila would say. Both the ceramic beaded necklace and the glass ring were charity shopped, while the gorgeous vintage brooch was a gift from my lovely friend Inez.

Our outing took us to the delightfully wild and unkempt Solhof park in our neighbouring village of Aartselaar, with its giant trees and Manderley-esque Rhododendrons. 

Apart from the ubiquitous pink and purple varieties, there were several shrubs of golden yellow Rhododendron luteum (a.k.a. Yellow Azalea) whose honeysuckle scent reached our nostrils long before we spotted the shrubs in question.

We refrained from walking up the narrow path spiralling up to the gazebo on top of the ice house this time and could, in fact, only just make out the top of its gnarled pillars and conical roof peeking out from above the fresh new growth of the yew hedge.

One of the park's most majestic trees is this magnificent 150-year old red cut-leaved beech (Fagus sylvatica 'Laciniata'). Considered a status symbol when the English-style landscape garden was established in the 19th Century, the tree was planted in a prominent position where it was clearly visible from the castle, now much modernized and turned into a luxury hotel.

The sun kept playing her by now familiar on-off game on Friday, with the mercury on the up and climbing to 22°C.

I pottered and sorted out some shoes which were hiding at the bottom of the big wardrobe in the bedroom. Most of them hadn't seen the light of day for years as my feet no longer agreed with their height, so I put aside a whole bag of them to sell at the flea market. 

Making a narrow escape were a pair of fabulous yellow suede and leather block-heeled slingbacks I bought for a song in a vintage shop about 10 years ago. Can you believe I'd almost forgotten about them?

It goes without saying that I had to wear them right away.  After all, they matched that day's oranges and lemons outfit perfectly!

Both the orange skirt with its random black spots and splodges, and the lemon leopard print top were charity shop finds, as was the necklace with its orange and brown wooden beads.

The stretchy belt was recently found in a bargain shop, while I believe the enamelled butterfly brooch was a flea market find. 

On my way out into the garden for outfit photos I quickly grabbed the red-rimmed straw hat - picked up at an outdoor flea market in May 2018 - as my hair was in sore need of a wash. I know, I'm such a slob!

Although the impenetrable jungle which is our garden nearly needs a machete to hack one's way through, I just had to go and investigate these intriguing purple flowers I spotted in front of our bench.

If I'm not mistaken, these pom-pom Aquilegias weren't planted by me, but might very well be the result of a happy marriage between my beloved Nora Barlows (here) and Aquilegia alpina (here). Whatever the case, aren't they absolutely stunning?

We had another bag of donations to drop off at the charity shop, so it would have been rude not to have a rummage at the same time. My loot that afternoon were a blue floral maxi dress by the Danish Only label, a funky pair of trousers, a groovilicious haori by Top Shop, and two belts.

My lunch time wanderings earlier that week took me to Melting Pot, the vintage per kilo shop, where I found a frilly floral blouse and a red short-sleeved Tricel jumper, which set me back just over € 5.

The roomy leather botanical print handbag from the Italian Pelle Di Giada brand came from Think Twice, who'd just started another round of their famous sales. Originally priced at € 10, it was mine for € 5 on one of their 50% off days. 

Saturday was a true Summer's day, with all-day sunshine and temperatures well over 25°C.

After picking up my new eye drops prescription as well as the sunglasses I'd ordered the week before, we decided to put the latter to work by going for another walk. 

Our destination: Middelheim Sculpture Park. Our aim: to check out the new layout which has received a mixed reaction from visitors. The jury is still out from our side, as we have yet to visit all the new zones.

According to its website, the art park is now divided into six zones, four of them featuring the four themes of the permanent collection. The collection presentation is thematic and the four themes, which are Motion, Human Nature, Urban Nature and Entanglement, are interconnected with the landscape.

Apparently, we were finding ourselves in the Human Nature zone!

One of my all-time favourites lives here. Never Mind (2017) by Welsh artist Richard Deacon (°1949) is an impressive steel volume gleaming in the grass. The name "Never Mind" refers both to the notion "don’t bother" and to the fact that the work is quite physically present. It is experienced "not only" by the mind but also by the body.

The other works you can see in the photos are "The Sower" (above, top right) by the Belgian painter and sculptor Constantin Meunier (1831-1905), dating from 1896, and "Tomorrow Everything Will Be Different" (above, top left), produced between 1993 and 1996 by Dutch sculptor Henk Visch (°1950).

We escaped the afternoon glare of the sun by walking under the leafy canopy of the trees on the paths leading from the Human Nature to the Urban Nature zone. 

But what are those giant maces doing lying all innocently yet menacingly among the trees?  They are called "Innocence can be hell" (1993) and are by the Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere (°1964). If her name sounds familiar, she also sculpted "Reclining Arcangelo II", which we came across in St. John's Hospital in Bruges.

Per Kirkeby's (1938-2018) architectural brick sculpture (above, top left and bottom right) is virtually nameless and dates from 1993. 

These topsy-turvy houses always make me feel like Alice after she'd taken a sip from the Drink Me! bottle and simultaneously journeyed down the rabbit hole. Or rather, Alice's daughter, as Alice was my Mum!

Their full name is "Model Home, “Bomarzo” type, 1979/94/2001)" - quite a mouthful - and their creator is the German conceptual artist Timm Ulrichs (°1940).

Time to tell you a bit more about my outfit. The floral maxi skirt is vintage and came from the vintage per kilo shop about two years ago, while the plaid blouse is charity shopped King Louie. My accessoires: a mix of high street, charity shop and flea market finds.

On our way out, we came across, clockwise from top left: "The Bathers" (1994) by  Luciano Fabro, "Great Bather" (1971) by Wieland Förster, the intriguingly named "Silver Fruit, Silver Cakespoons, The Garden" (2012) by Peter Rogiers and "Large Bather I" (1956) by Emilio Greco.

Before returning to our car, we passed an avenue of Rhododendrons in a delightful variety of colours. 

They may have been much better maintained than those in Solhof park and thus did not remind me that much of those impossibly high ones towering over Mrs. de Winter as she walked along the abandoned drive to Manderley in her dream, but they still seemed a fitting end to this literary inspired post.

See you next time!