The English summer: a cat's view

The English summer is an elusive thing.

Grey skies and chill give way to days, or maybe only moments, of sunshine before reverting unpredictably to downpours of rain.

Suddenly it's September and you're blinking in disbelief: 'that was it? that was really summer?'

There's only one thing you can rely on: around April/May every year without fail there will be confident predictions of a 'bumper, barbecue summer ahead!!' and we'll be bombarded with bright displays of garden paraphernalia, sun-loungers, picnic fare ...

Five years down the line I've come to rather admire this peculiarly British brand of optimism as a kind of triumph of hope over experience.

This was my garden in a sunny window of a couple of hours last weekend.

Even Toby, who's gone through his own complex adjustment to his adoptive homeland (in which the discovery of heated floors has registered prominently on his personal Feline Joy scale) appeared to understand the wisdom of seizing the moment. He ventured forth, in a rare spurt of energy, for a sortie to the Great Outdoors ...

... truly a model for Hills' Science 'Senior Light' cat food! 

Five years of 24/7 heated-floor sprawling ...

(no, he's not a normal cat really)


alternating with armchair-lounging will tend to pile on the pounds around one's middle ...

But oh dear, only moments later this was the view from the window ...

(spot the spider-web glistening with rain on the olive tree ...)

Toby knew there was only one sensible thing to do in the circumstances ...

Hope your weather is better! Me, I'm planning my hols in warmer climes ...

Babylon's Gardens

Ex Africa semper aliquid novi, my father is fond of quoting. Though perhaps not exactly what Pliny the Elder had in mind (though who knows really what was on his mind?) it seems to me whenever I visit Cape Town that there are always some gob-smackingly wonderful new places to indulge the senses. 

Babylonstoren (Babylon's tower) in the Drakenstein valley is technically something new created on something old, derived from something much older. The 'something new' is a unique garden, restaurant and guest houses designed by South African style icon Karen Roos (ex-editor of Elle Decoration) on a Cape Dutch farm dating to 1692.

Nebuchadnezzar's fabulous hanging gardens of Babylon are reinterpreted here, in nine acres of formal garden based on the design of the 17th century Dutch East India Company Gardens, created to supply settlers and passing ships on the trade route to the East with fresh vegetables. 

According to legend, Nebuchadnezzar created the hanging gardens in an attempt to cheer up his homesick Persian wife, Amytia, who found the flat, arid, sun-baked landscape of Mesopotamia depressing and pined for her green and mountainous homeland. 

Unlike Nebuchadnezzar, who had the job of building an artificial mountain with overhanging terraces, Karen Roos had the green and mountainous parts in place down here in the Cape. Two women gardeners planted a formal garden on the principle that everything in it is edible.

The farm restaurant, appropriately enough called Babel, in a converted cowshed, is run by another woman, chef Maranda Engelbrecht, with a farm-to-fork philosophy: 'if we don't grow it or make it or raise it, it comes from a neighbouring farm'. 

Eat under umbrellas on the terrace or in Babel's cool white interior ...

The menu gets written up on the 'bull board' above. It changes daily according to what's fresh in the garden and what seasonal colours work together ...

I have my niece to thank (thank you Nicola) for introducing me to this place, though I've since discovered that this seasoned traveller and this hungry woman are also wild about it.  We went there on the last day of our trip, and now I know exactly where I want to stay next time - in one of these glass-fronted guest houses with designer kitchens where you get to pick your own dinner from the gardens of Babylon ...

(Photos in last two collages from Babylonstoren's website; the rest my own)

Chelsea Flowers

The Chelsea Flower Show is held every year for five days in May ...

in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement home for British soldiers ...

These are the Chelsea Pensioners, in dashing scarlet coats and tricorne hats ...

... some, like the old gent below, impressively bemedalled ...

On Friday I joined a crowd of thousands thronging their way down these tree-lined avenues ...

all suitably dressed for a typical British early summer's day!

The show gets a limited capacity of (advance-booking-only) 157 000 people every year. On Friday I wondered if they'd all somehow been booked for the same day.  Talk about crowds - it was elbows-out and umbrellas en-garde ...

Some came dressed with a due sense of occasion ...

That's the spirit! 
These bags were a sort of uniform, for show guides and purchases ...

The Great Pavilion is the main destination, where exhibitors vie for medals. Here there were massed displays of single flowers ...

exotic orchid water-gardens

succulents ...

(this one especially for you, Nicola!)


Themed displays ...

Waitrose and the NFU's (the British farmers' union) stand, 'Championing British', mixed plants and produce

Country exhibits ...

(and this one's for you, mother!)

Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens (South Africa) wins gold medals with regular monotony for their amazing displays against giant photographic backdrops, above and below.

Hello, is that King Kong skulking behind the agapanthus? - 

Birmingham City Council's display 'plight of the gorillas' highlighted endangered Rwandan gorillas


Even Helen Mirren was there!

Helen looks thrilled with having a new variety of a carniverous pitcher plant named after her


The country display that really blew me away was 'Fantastic Thailand' ...

It was impossible to do justice with my camera to the size of this massive display because of the crowds jostling around it ... these are just some details, above and below. Everything is constructed from millions of tiny flowers, banana leaf and bamboo. A smiling Thai lady told me it took 60 people 3 months to put together before it was transported in pieces to London ...

There was even floral fashion - Charlotte Murrant used exotic flowers to create a range of wonderful jackets ...

In the vast open-air space around the Great Pavilion were more exhibits and landscaped gardens than you could hope to cover in one day, and garden accessories to suit every imaginable taste. You could go whimsical with an Alice in Wonderland theme ...

maybe teamed with these fantastical garden tool sculptures I really fancied ...

though if you happen to own a stately home, a life-size stag or a shield-bearing gryphon could be just the ticket ...

perhaps a giant escargot or a tree-height bandaged running man? ...

No, I think my favourite is this mad dinosaur-riding top-hatted naked lady ...

No-one does elegant conservatories and garden gazebos quite as well as the English ...

though I also love their country cottage garden look - ramshackle huts, untamed flowers and the quintessentially English potting shed ...

In similar vein, and in the spirit of the royal wedding, was this vintage Morris Minor with retro accessories and a copy of the Aston Martin licence plate  made by Prince Harry for the newly-weds ...

A highlight of this year's show was Diarmuid Gavin's Irish Sky Garden. Suspended from this giant crane ...

you could be lifted up above the trees in a hanging sky garden for an aerial view of the show and London ...

No, I did not join the long queue for a swing in the sky ... I was all flowered out by now. Time to leave, and although rickshaws were doing brisk business between the show and the tube station, I joined the legions of those on foot, many carrying their purchases ...

some carrying only the accessories of a well-heeled Chelsea gent - rolled-up newspaper, trilby and umbrella ...

maybe pausing for a pit-stop at a pub ...?

on the way back to Sloane Square, all leafy green ...

where the shop windows were fully into the spirit of the flower show and I spotted this cute little grass-covered Smart car ...

Now I know just what to wear for next year, and how to arrive in style ...