Hampton kitsch

To Hampton Court to review the vegetable patch (see reference 1), it being already a month or so since our last visit.

The cabbages were looking a bit ravaged, what with the rough weather and being picked, but the patch was in otherwise good order. And we found that the eastern wall, as well as sporting a garden shed fully kitted out with the sort of gardeners' memorabilia which would be useful in an Agatha Christie adaptation, now sported a shelter which sheltered various fancy woodwork, including the plaque illustrated, complete, if you look carefully with a mouse. A throwback to the carving of the days of Grinling Gibbons (see reference 2), if not quite to that of the master himself. I wonder where they went to get it done? Perhaps I should have read the accompaniments with more care.

Pushed on into the wilderness to find a small number of crocuses, snowdrops (mainly those large look-alike snowdrops under bushes which are not really snowdrops) and daffodils out. One rather vague & ineffective mother who was letting her child pick snowdrops for mummy had to be chastised.

Privy garden looking well, as it does in the winter. Carp, if not all koi, present, correct and ambled across to be fed when they spotted us. Purple cyclamen behind the wall behind the naked nymph at the back of the sunken garden with the vaguely animal topiary doing very well, particularly since they have not been there that long.

Wound up in the Tilt Yard café to find that the choice of cakes now that tea & cake has been moved to a counter near the entrance, away from the main serving area at the back, much diminished. The things that Starbucks and similar places call muffins, and which I do not much care for, much in evidence. No sign of any kind of almond tart. I remember the cakes under old management being much better and I suppose that now I will have to push for a visit to Bridge Road if I want cake.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/tudor-greens.html.

Reference 2: http://www.gglvfederation.org/. Presumably somewhere near where the chap lived, not, I do not suppose, where he went to school. But there is an executive headmaster, for all the world like an executive chef at a pretentious pub.