Even more catch-up

I think the quickest way of catching up on what I can tell you of the Pixie family activities is to use pictures to embellish my ramblings.

Anyway, Wednesday last week we went to the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show, courtesy of Compostwoman, who has the most amazing and useful blog here ....     http://www.the-compostbin.com/  . when you read back on her blog you will see that she ran a competition aided by Ecover, your blogger was a fortunate recipient of tickets - Exhibitor tickets no less. We drove part of the way to the show, then caught a local bus to Hampton Court Green. Although the traffic was light, it would have been quicker to walk, a long wait for the bus, a lost missing driver's key, service halted after two stops. Let us just say there has been correspondence between us and TfL.

First surprise were the scarecrows as we saw the exhibit for the primary school Martha and Adam attended, we hadn't known their entry had been chosen. Why no publicity in local papers or media?

Another personal incident, cheered by my success in this competition I entered as many as I could at the show, needless to say haven't won anything, but I wouldn't have noticed another competitor doing the same. It was our daughter in law's mother, neither of us had known the others were going so it was a pleasant surprise to see her, her husband, sister and niece. We had time for a brief chat, we'll be meeting up next month to celebrate DiL's birthday anyway.

So what did  I think of the show? An improvement on previous years with the concept of three zones. Of course we didn't see everything, but was mighty impressed with Ecover, not because of the tickets, but because their prize winning garden gave out a sustainability message without being heavy handed. Would love our attempts at a bee friendly garden to look like this.

There were famous people around Ecover garden, it was interesting to see the filming although didn't spot this when we watched the TV programmes later in the week,

Briefly, another  'like' was the Waitrose and NFU stand where vegetables and flowers were integrated in a most colourful manner.

It was very fortunate that the day was cooler than some that week, there was a breeze so walking around was not a problem for me. As usual we came away aware that we had missed much; we didn't buy plants; but a shirt for him and jumper for me from Joules; a linen bag and cleaning products from Ecover; we watched an interesting demonstration of how Tudor bread was made; drank tea, ate lunch and later ice creams and basically enjoyed looking at the gardens and all the myriad products vaguely associated with gardening. It was fun, English, people seemed happy and the sun shone. The journey home was a fast as the morning journey was slow.