Hugh Joins In The Scrum

Hugh said that the only thing he wanted to do, apart from having us spend his birthday weekend with him, was to pop over to the next village to have a mooch at their annual BIG Plant Sale.  

We’ve been with Hugh before on a previous birthday visit, so we knew that we needed to girdle our lions most robustly, as it was going to be an almighty scrum …….

…….. country folk, it seems, take their plant sales very seriously, a bit like the our beloved village jumble sales of old, before Car Boots took over!

Hugh knew exactly what he wanted as he’d been making copious notes all last week while watching the BBC coverage of The Chelsea Flower Show.

The plan was for Hugh to jostle for prime position, elbowing if necessary, but strictly no stamping on toes, all something of a delicious and heady novelty compared to the genteel ways of the Notting Hill glitterati.

We were stand behind him to take the burgeoning boxes of plants from him in quick succession and Nigel then was to take them to a corner by the stage and stand guard over them, as it has been known for other sale goers to rifle through the boxes of others in the past!

 

We were a crack team! Hugh decided that he didn’t really need any antique gardening tools, even if they were only priced at £1 each,  but he did avail himself of a free copy of the Country Gardener as it would look quite impressive on his coffee table back in London.  What is he like?

And while Hugh, Nigel and I partook in a more relaxed après plant scrum tea and homemade coffee cake, Darrell volunteered to stand guard outside, again to keep an eye on Hugh’s prized plants, as he had indeed bagged some most excellent specimens, and anyway Darrell was also very interested in what sort of cars country people drove ……