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Weekend
Visited my mum at the weekend. It didn't start very auspiciously, in that I had to work on Friday morning (tax return deadlines) which was coincidentally my birthday. Then I went swimming at lunchtime. By the time we had packed and set off I was feeling so dopey that I had to ask M to do the driving (round the M25 on a late Friday afternoon). I wouldn't say the M25 was back to its beastly old self but there were certainly delays and it took us over 2 hours to do approximately 90 miles.
Anyway, things improved on arrival. Mum had made us a lovely summer meal with salmon, stir fried veg and strawberries and cream (not all together) and after sharing a bottle of Prosecco with her (M doesn't drink) I was feeling a lot perkier.
On Saturday we made an experimental sortie to M&S. Mum had not been into a shop since lockdown started, so it was a bit exciting for her, but she coped, and managed to buy some groceries.
Then in the afternoon we went to Kew Gardens. We didn't need to pay as Mum is a member, but we did need to book in advance. We managed to park in a side street near Victoria Gate. It was quite busy and nobody (except us) was wearing masks. It was overcast, but otherwise good. We ambled along at Mum's stroller pace.
I had read about some new displays (different countries of the world) but these turned out to be new panels pointing to existing trees and items from those countries, so less exciting. Nevertheless we went to China which included the pagoda, whose dragons had been newly refurbished, so their gold paint was shiny and new, and also Japan which was represented by a Japanese garden, raked gravel and a 4/5 size replica gateway of an original from a temple in Kyoto.
Then we tried to go to the temperate house but there was a long queue, and all the accessible entrances had been closed off (although I'm sure we could have found one if we'd tried for long enough). Instead we found a modern glasshouse devoted to Western Australia, which was not crowded and had bench seats, so we sat on them for a while, and wandered round to admire kangaroo paws and strawflowers. I might try to get some of the latter to grow in our garden as they are very bright and smell lovely.
We drove back through Richmond Park, carefully driving round the cyclists, of whom there were many, and pointing out the deer (which can be hard to distinguish from tree stumps unless you look hard).
Anyway, things improved on arrival. Mum had made us a lovely summer meal with salmon, stir fried veg and strawberries and cream (not all together) and after sharing a bottle of Prosecco with her (M doesn't drink) I was feeling a lot perkier.
On Saturday we made an experimental sortie to M&S. Mum had not been into a shop since lockdown started, so it was a bit exciting for her, but she coped, and managed to buy some groceries.
Then in the afternoon we went to Kew Gardens. We didn't need to pay as Mum is a member, but we did need to book in advance. We managed to park in a side street near Victoria Gate. It was quite busy and nobody (except us) was wearing masks. It was overcast, but otherwise good. We ambled along at Mum's stroller pace.
I had read about some new displays (different countries of the world) but these turned out to be new panels pointing to existing trees and items from those countries, so less exciting. Nevertheless we went to China which included the pagoda, whose dragons had been newly refurbished, so their gold paint was shiny and new, and also Japan which was represented by a Japanese garden, raked gravel and a 4/5 size replica gateway of an original from a temple in Kyoto.
Then we tried to go to the temperate house but there was a long queue, and all the accessible entrances had been closed off (although I'm sure we could have found one if we'd tried for long enough). Instead we found a modern glasshouse devoted to Western Australia, which was not crowded and had bench seats, so we sat on them for a while, and wandered round to admire kangaroo paws and strawflowers. I might try to get some of the latter to grow in our garden as they are very bright and smell lovely.
We drove back through Richmond Park, carefully driving round the cyclists, of whom there were many, and pointing out the deer (which can be hard to distinguish from tree stumps unless you look hard).
no subject
We grow kangaroo paws around here; they look very exotic and charmingly weird. I had no idea strawflowers were native to Australia. They're really pretty, I wonder if I could grow some here. I mean here at my house; I know they grow in the Bay Area.