This is Puffball, a sculpture by Norman Dilworth. Readers of this diary who don't know me may get the impression I spend my days pottering in the garden and wandering the countryside. If only that were so but I keep some other irons in the fire to keep body and soul together.
 For quite some time I have worked freelance dealing with the practicalities of installing exhibitions and artworks. Generally this won't figure in the diary because it doesn't have much to do with plants and ecology but once in a blue moon they overlap.
 Case in point the photos above are from a project undertaken on this day two years ago. It's interesting to scroll through the archive and think "Was it really that long ago?" or "I didn't think it was that long ago". Curiously the past often seems both ancient and recent simultaneously.
 So back in 2015 I got a call from Shelley at ADi Solutions who undertake such things and we drove down to a very large house near Bath for a site visit with a view to installing Puffball (then a bundle of rods in an outbuilding). A couple of months later I returned with friend and neighbour Keith; he and I have worked together on numerous projects in the artworld. Also on board a chap called Charles, another one of ADi's merry men.
 It was an interesting piece to install because we needed to take an approach that might appropriately enough be called "organic." The sculpture was first made in the early 1970s and has been exhibited several times since. We had photos but no set of instructions and concluded that it was in effect re-made each time looking the same but different.
 So we too were interpreting the concept of Puffball and re-making it in the spirit of the original. This was a process of trial and error as we re-configured the poles until we evolved a final version that seemed "right".
 As the photos indicate the setting was splendid and the extensive gardens sloped down to the banks of the River Avon which were a haze of wildflowers.