Tea Time

The weather is beautiful in London these days.  Warm sunny days seem to be the usual these days.  Definitely not typical for England.  In fact there is a pretty serious drought going on here and there is already water rationing in some of the most severely hit areas.

I'm enjoying my terrace (British for balcony) but missing my yard.  There is something about spring that makes me want to get my hands dirty.  Must be all that farming blood running through my veins.  Here they would call a yard a garden.  But the gardens that I have seen are all really little more than a tiny patch of space (12 feet x 20 feet would be pretty big) and doesn't really allow for any sort of gardening like Canadians are used to.  I often think of how big my Grandma's garden on the farm was when I spent my summers there!  And that was just the garden not the yard.  I actually have a picture of Grandpa & Grandma's current yard, looking out to the barn, on my computer screen at work and have been asked several times if ALL of that is our land.  I think they think my Grandparents are rich.  When I tell them how much land my Uncle farms their eyes get a little bugged out.  In Canada land is measured in sections and in England it it measured in square metres.  Very different scales of reference.

People who want to grow their own vegetables have an allotment.  This is like a plot in a community garden.  Allotment gardening is serious stuff over here.  People are on lists for years to get an allotment.  At first when I would see allotment gardens I could not figure out what was going on.  It looks like horrible mess to me.  The plots don't seem to be laid out in any sensible manner and there tend to be garden/tool sheds which range from fanciful doll houses to rotten lean-to's.  Weeding doesn't appear to be such a priority, in general, English gardens -- be they flowers or vegetables -- are far less tended than I am used to.

Not much of note happening these days for me (other than the sun bathing).  I have started collecting a proper English tea set from Fortnum & Mason.  You could substitute expensive for proper in the previous sentence if you wish.  Thanks to my recent visitors, I received a very nice gift certificate in the mail a few days after they left and I quickly invested it in a pretty little cream and sugar set to go with my new tea pot.  I have added a few other bits and bobs too.  I can report that a proper cup of tea, made with proper English tea, is available to any future visitors.  But you'll have to drink out of very improper mugs...because I'm still saving up for the tea cups to match!