Park Life

On Sunday 3rd to the Woodland Gardens at Bushy Park, via the Diana Fountain. This being the fountain that often looks to me as if it is leaning to the right, the odd thing being that it look like this from whatever angle you look at her. As it happens, not too much of that on this occasion. But the woodland gardens having a lot of mature trees, we did learn that the policy was to let them lie where they fell, subject to a bit of tidying up. A policy intended to promote beetle life. Lots of cute small children, running about and generally being appealing. Good almond slice in the café, a rather handsome affair, presumably reflecting the affluence of the area as well as the royal status of the park.

Then on Sunday 10th, yesterday, to Hampton Court, for what seemed like the first visit for a while, and the first since, according to the search button, 3rd July, when we came to take a look at the roses. Not many roses yesterday, but a bright sunny day with lots of autumn interest. We hoped that the metasequoias were deciduous as their feathery leaves were looking rather brown (there were lots of small buds, which was hopeful). Some berries on the mistletoe. For a change we took a walk along the Pavilion Terrace to admire the interesting collection of pine trees planted along and the river over the wall. A river containing one or two eights out for Sunday practice.

Quite a lot of garden work going on, including a complete makeover of the western garden, the one to the north of the main entrance and immediately to the east of the western extremity of Hampton Court Road. We rather liked it the way it was, a sort of quiet antidote to the fancier gardening elsewhere in the palace, so it will be interesting to see what they will make of it, the standard of gardening at the palace being very high.

Took the opportunity to pay one of our infrequent visits to Lancelot Wines and picked up what turned out to be rather a good Franco-German wine called gewurztaminer from Steinert in the Alsace. No traces of the small bubbles that you sometimes get with German wine and on which I am not that keen.

PS: according to Wikipedia: 'metasequoia is a fast-growing, deciduous tree, and the sole living species, metasequoia glyptostroboides, is one of three species of conifers known as redwoods. It is native to the Sichuan–Hubei region of China'. I would never have guessed that they were Chinese. Nor would I have guessed that they were members of the cypress family, some of which manage to get along in the middle of the Sahara desert. So there.