Tag: Chelsea Flower Show

#919 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

We were plunged into digital silence yesterday. The O2 mast serving the Talland Bay area provided no service for nearly 12 hours.  I thought this Foxglove was much more pretty than a useless signal mast. It is also a reminder that we are heading towards the Chelsea Flower Show Season. When we dream big in our gardening/yardening world. In our yard world, next week sees the arrival of a wall height trellis extension. In our city home our neighbours have cats and chickens who see our yard as an extension of their own. After nearly three years of escalating visits, we have to do something. So trellis and climbing plants are the new deterrents.

So , very soon the yard will be a whole new world. Hopefully a chicken and cat free zone. And hopefully as beautifully styled as a Show Garden.

#218 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn YardeningLeave a comment

Our garden designing , or now to be accurate yarden design, is nearly all copied or modified from things we have seen on the TV coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show. This year’s event started being broadcast yesterday. Some years we are lucky enough to visit in person. This year is a watch it on TV year. By coincidence we visited a garden centre yesterday that was primped and made perfect, ready to welcome all the inspired amateur gardeners who will visit hoping to create something magical on their own plot.

At first I thought this pairing of a silk scarf and flower was a serendipitous occurrence of lost property and garden pots. But the silk scarf and others I discovered later were deliberately and whimsically placed. I’m not sure our robust city yard has the chutzpah to be adorned by floaty scarves.

We were at the garden centre on a double mission. To replace a couple of casualties from the move and to avoid very heavy Cornish rain. We had also spent some time at an EcoLodge over the weekend and were freshly charged with sustainable ideas.

We like the idea of extending gardens with the use of garden mirrors. Our London garden had a series of arches leading to infinity at the boundary. In reality we had painted an old concrete garage black and stuck arched mirrors between the concrete supports. Within a couple of years the garage had disappeared beneath foliage and all that could be seen were three enchanted paths leading, who knows where, which were actually just reflections of our small urban plot. Since then garden mirrors have become a bigger thing with bigger prices, but like a bee to honey I am still attracted to them. Then I was struck with a thunderbolt of an idea. When we bought this house we inherited a large, very heavy mirror that has been propped up in our hallway ever since we took it off the wall. Advertising it locally at a very cheap price or offering to give it away has not shifted it at all. In part because it is cumbersome and heavy. Checking out garden mirrors at the garden centre I realised they were not as well constructed as the one we were trying to give away. As soon as we were home a space was cleared and the big beast was moved into the yard. Not what I would have chosen exactly, but the thrill of repurposing something that had been previously unwanted feels satisfying and we can design around it to make it look like it was always part of the grand plan.

The recycling gods must really have been with us yesterday. The evening walk on our local beach delivered up another piece of yard hardware.

While the dogs were scampering we found an old metal grid all caught up with seaweed that had been washed up onto the beach. Not too much of a clean up, and some curious looks as we walked home, it was soon installed as a support for our tomatoes.

Not too bad for a rainy day out in Cornwall.

Pandemic Ponderings # 67

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Pandemic ponderings, SerendipityLeave a comment

Sunday musings on a sun lounger. Not everything goes to plan. This is true in real life, just as it is in pandemic life. I’ve always been accepting of the wonderful John Lennon lyric.

‘ Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans’

I’m surprised by the accepting way the whole world has taken to changing its plans, very little protest and a lot of understanding.

Things happen @theoldmortuary, under normal circumstances,that I had never even considered needed plans. A trip to the supermarket, coffee with friends, weekends with our family. These things happened, sometimes spontaneously with very little thought. Now doing anything takes great thought and the mundane has become something to dress up for and revel in, when three months ago it would have been a chore.

This weekend would not have been mundane.We should be exhausted and bursting with ideas and inspiration. This would have been a weekend in London soaking up the buzz and vibrancy of our favourite city.

Friday would have seen us at The Chelsea Flower Show, but like everything it has been cancelled.

The rest of the weekend would have been spent with friends and family in various parts of the city. Our hair would be cut, our minds would be restocked with happiness and great ideas, some shopping might have occured and, by now, we would be on the A303 chattering about everything and, in particular, how much our garden would be tweaked. Chelsea and Hampton Court are the two flower shows that inspire us.

I’m not actually dwelling on the might- have-been because there is a future out there for most of us , we just have to wait a bit to experience it. Today I should have been spending four hours on the road but actually I’ve spent four hours in the garden enjoying some of the stuff we’ve learnt in the past, at Chelsea, and the washing is dry.

So a Sunday, not as planned, but a Sunday full to the brim of unplanned loveliness.

Vivid

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Travels

Vivid is my word of choice on a dull, wet January day. Vivid brightens the world. Vivid people enrich the world. Vivid is never dull. I searched my files for a picture or two to illustrate vivid. My vivid file is rather full and I’m unable to just pick one so join me on a vivid journey for January. The route will be erratic.

Vivid Hugo in January 7 years ago. An 8 week old puppy. As I write this he still loves a vivid backdrop. Today he is sleeping on a Chartreuse coloured pillow.

One last Hugo centric image comes from Brighton Pavillion Winter Ice skating rink possibly 6 years ago. I love the accidental or serendipitous heart shape of the illuminated portion of the image.

Taking my next link as architecture Brighton Pavillion we to Neal’s Yard just North of Covent Garden Tube Station.

I’m completely lost as to where these beach huts are. Pink and orange takes us to the seaside, either Suffolk or Sussex.

This wall is in Marrakech, dropping the orange we go pink. A pink wall in Majorelle Gardens famed for their blue. There is a tiny triangle of the eponymous blue if you look hard enough.

Pink Marrakech walls guide me gently towards the next new direction, which will be sartorial with a nod to a traditionally dressed market porter. What is intangible from this picture is the vivid smell eminating from the tannery area. A rare example of vivid not being a good thing.

Sartorially vivid takes us to South Korea. A chance photograph of a proper dapper chap.

Another chance photograph. Not so dapper but definately a chap taken at Whitstable Carnival.

Body habitas gives me the next cue for a change of direction. Statues by Mauro Perruchetti. Jelly Baby Family at Marble Arch.

Jelly baby sculptures neatly swerve me to foodstuffs. Next up Dolly Mixtures at a baptismal party.

The glitter and twinkly confetti party table takes us effortlessly to a live Christmas Karaoke party in Peckham.

Then on to yet more twinkle. This time for Chinese New Year in Hong Kong.

Peckham to Hong Kong, quite a journey but as we’ve arrived there is more Hong Kong to reveal.

Close up of a lantern , quickly followed by a photographic error but vivid and thus valuable to this blog.

As luck would have it I have a Chinese New Year textile link.

My packing for Chinese New Year.

That was a lucky turn as textiles are awkward to weave into a story. The craft tent at The Royal Cornwall Show tempted Psychedelic crochet out of the closet.

Port Eliot Festival, also in Cornwall ties up trees as gifts.

Which brings me gratefully to Vivid Nature.

February tulips in Saltash

Artichokes in June.

Which briefly return us to Hong Kong for spiky plants.

Rambutans at Tuen Mun market in the New Territories. Fruit directs me to some of my paintings. Starting with Fig, Blackberry and Cob but.

Then on to an invented abstract fruit.

Which bears a little resemblance to a real flower,

at the Chelsea Flower Show, which of course returns us to London.

This is a very expensive monitor in a hospital in Marylebone. This intriguing pattern was caused by an unexpectedly vigorous movement of an x-ray machine, known as a C-arm it orbits around the patient. Swinging us neatly to the actual Orbit at The Olympic Park. Sculpture by Anish Kapoor.

Red neon effect and East London track me back to The City.

A favourite bar and coffee shop opposite Smithfield Market and close to St Bartholomew’s Hospital . Ask For Janice is a refuge from the realities of work. It is also the location for celebrations and socializing with work friends. Often before more physical challenges , which bowls us along nicely.

Posh bowling in Bloomsbury with the boys.

Buoys on the Norfolk coast.

And finally some vivid music and more spheres.

Congratulations on completing a vivid journey. Have a chocolate.