Balsam Bashing Bonanza

A group of "balsam bashers" from the Friends of the River Frome, led by Dorothy-Anne Bryant, visited Iford today to assist us with the ongoing fight against Himalayan Balsam.

Balsam is an annoyingly pretty, but highly invasive species which is colonising the UK's river banks.

 The team of 8 donned their gloves, waders, and other gear and pulled the better part of two tonnes of plants over the course of a couple of hours.

We even deployed the good ship Siegfried.  

Siegfried is a former Rheingold dredger from back in the day (no, not really).

 It was a lot of fun, and if you would like to join the Balsam Bashers in their essential work to free the bank from this invasive plant, then go to their website here:

http://fromeriverfriends.org.uk/

Yoga and Gong Bath in the Cloister

The gentle patter of raindrops falling from the Cloister's stone tiled roof formed a natural backing-track to a yoga session in the cloister led by Philomena Plunkett this evening.  Around ten had signed up for this first ever yoga evening in the cloister, and after a successful event we hope next year to develop this into a little series.

The second half of the session saw Graham Bater take the assembled company through a "Gong Bath" meditation; a most remarkable experience as the sounds washed through the cloister, the acoustic augmenting the lower frequencies.

Graham brought with him a range of gongs, from the large to the small, and his expertise was apparent as he extracted an array of sounds from the percussive to the vocal from these simple metal instruments.

If you would like to know about future yoga or meditation sessions in the garden, please get in touch or join our mailing list (www.ifordmanor.co.uk - at the bottom of the homepage).

Iford Arts Season Round-up

Well, what a season that was - made spectacularly more manageable by the beautiful weather (for the most part) from our point of view.

We kicked off with Verdi's La Traviata, a rich production by Bruno Ravella, the Chroma orchestra conducted by Oliver Gooch.  Critical acclaim in particular for Alinka Kozari's performance as leading lady.

Highlight of a lively weekend of midsummer Jazz was a visit by Claire Martin and Ian Shaw, who engaged the audience with their humourous renditions.

Jeff Clarke's production of Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne brought the comic highlight of the year, as the cast burst onto the cloister scene dressed as steam engines, clouds of white smoke billowing from their funnels.  Review.

Handel's pastoral Acis and Galatea proved itself on the perfect scale for the cloister.  Mary Bevan as Galatea excelled, here pictured with Lukas Jacobski as Polyphemus in Pia Furtado's moving presentation of a well known work.  Christian Curnyn as ever brought the score to life exquisitly.

Reviews: Independent; Telegraph; Guardian

The final fling for the season was a weekend of jazz, including the excellent Minas Project, from Brazil (above).

All in all an excellent season - thank you to the team at Iford Arts who put it all together and we look forward to next year!