What A Swell Party This Is

week 3, Flower Market: globe thistle, stocks, nigella,
peonies...fainted dead away after this snap was taken.

Columbia Mkt, week 2

too beautiful, though I'm no flower arranger!

Regent's Park

I didn't care much for the formal rose garden,
but the other plantings were wonderful...
especially the 60's British Telecomtower
blooming in the background.

I Brake for These!

Is this name short for "Tiddlebat," which I
believe was the name of Miss Jekyll's cat?

Columbia Road Flower Market...

...is the new definition of "died and gone to heaven." Five
bunches of ravishing blooms for under 20 quid. Cutting the
tops off our Sainsbury liter water bottles for vases!

a brilliant, smashing gobsmacker

to my amazement, we leave Thursday for London,
where we will be for five weeks. Five weeks in
England during height of blooming time. I faint
dead away several times a day, beholding the fact.
You can't count the number of altars to various
gods I've got set up around the house, giving
incredulous thanks continually for this good
fortune. It is humbling. On a more prosaic note, I have the bus route
number for riding past Buckingham Palace Gardens
and getting a glimpse in for a pound fifty, because despite photo
above, I am not actually attending one of the Queen's
Garden Parties. But that's just fine with me--have
you ever seen the hats you have to wear to
those things??

leavin' my best buds behind.....

...but I swear this is the ONLY reason for which I
would ever deliberately miss both June in my
garden, which is the only good month, and my
kitty kat, which is the only good cat. Well, no, I
know YOUR cat is the only good cat, too, I'll
concede that. Hoping Kew and S'hurst and Upton
Grey and Munstead Wood, the gars I am planning
on visiting, will make me swoon enough to for-
get what's goin' on back in America, and I
suspect they will.

big fat peony buds...

the last bloom on the shrub....

...now it's on to the herbacious ones!

At laaaaast, my loooove has come along....

My tree peony bloomed.

it's Chelsea week....

The Queen gave her son a medal as Camilla and Philip bemusedly looked on, Ringo showed up again [did George ever come? -- he was the gardener], and the poor corporate types withdrew lots of sponsorship money. Chelsea without the crowds at bbc.co.uk, telegraph.co.uk, guardian.co.uk.
Can't believe it, my fingernail is almost clean in this photo of my favorite [but one] card from The Garden Game. I'm drinking a Pimm's as I type this. Ok, this post is insufferable. Deal!

the merrie month of may

T.I.W.I.D.I. *

* this is why i do it