{"id":281,"date":"2009-05-20T19:42:22","date_gmt":"2009-05-20T19:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bearhugs.co.uk\/blog\/?p=281"},"modified":"2009-05-20T19:55:41","modified_gmt":"2009-05-20T19:55:41","slug":"chelsea-flower-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bearhugs.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/281","title":{"rendered":"Chelsea Flower Show"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had a busy day yesterday and I couldn’t post. Firstly John was too mean to pay for another days internet access and then he said he wasn’t prepared to sort through all his 350(!!!!!) photos from the day to find the ones I wanted. Who takes that many photos in one day?
\nAnyway back to yesterday, we had gone to bed late on Monday but we were up in good time on Tuesday (even Maria), we wanted to get to the show in good time, before the crowds if possible. Apparently the show is totally sold out and tickets for yesterday were changing hands at \u00c2\u00a3150!
\nWe were going through the gates at 8.20 and decided to start with the Eastern Avenue and Maria was immediately oh-ing and ah-ing over jewellery, pictures, bags, sculptures etc. etc. and that’s before we saw any plants. John showed a lot more backbone than usual and we managed to make it to 10 o’clock without buying anything. By then we had seen loads, including an eco-garden with places for bugs etc. to set up home.
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\nAnd of course lots of beautiful plants.
\n\"P5192494\"<\/a> \"P5192515\"<\/a> \"P5192503\"<\/a> We were all ready for a sit down and a bite to eat. While we had breakfast I had a look at the show catalogue so we could continue with a bit more purpose.
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\nWe decided to go and look at the flower arrangements, Maria had heard about a floristry competition to do with hats. On our way we passed right next to one of Maria’s heroes, apparently he’s pretty sexy for his age. I can’t see it myself.
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\nThe flower arrangements were lovely but not the ones we were looking for. Those were apparently in the Grand Pavilion. So off we went. WOW. The wallet had to come out and we have plants arriving over the next few months, and we came away with seeds. John said now he worked from home, he fancied growing some things from seed. Maria embraced this idea with enthusiasm and he now has plenty to do. John took loads of photos and I can’t possibly put even his much abridged set on here, so this is just a ‘small’ selection. You can view his abridged set here<\/a>.
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\nI also made a new friend. The show is held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital where the Chelsea pensioners live. This is me with Sergeant Taylor. Some great bonsai trees in the background.
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\nBy now we were shattered again, so we went outside for a listen to the band and a sit down. Luckily the sun was shining and the ice cream was lovely. While it was lovely outside we thought we’d have a look at the show gardens. Maria and John loved the courtyard gardens.
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\nMy personal favourite was the James May Plasticine garden.\"P5192662\"<\/a>
\nApparently they couldn’t award a normal medal because he had no living plants, but they specially made him a plasticine gold medal, the first (and last) one ever awarded.
\nWe were getting pretty tired by now and decided we would find the hats and then call it a day. They were well worth searching out.
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\nWe were so glad we only had a short taxi ride back to the hotel, rather than the long drive back to Nottingham. We were all tired out and I think we all had a quick nap, well I know I did.
\nThen we went for our evening meal, down to Trader Vic’s again, for a proper meal this time. It was one of the best meals out we’ve had recently. I can’t decide which was best, the piri piri prawns or the Indonesian lamb with satay. Although the banana fritters with rum sauce was pretty good. And the cocktails were great again. Good job we didn’t have to go far to our room.
\nThis morning it was checkout and back to everyday life. The Patchings Festival is in a couple of weeks, so lots of work to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a busy day yesterday and I couldn’t post. Firstly John was too mean to pay for another days internet access and then he said he wasn’t prepared to sort through all his 350(!!!!!) photos from the day to find the ones I wanted. Who takes that many photos in one day? Anyway back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-london"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bearhugs.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bearhugs.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bearhugs.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bearhugs.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bearhugs.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bearhugs.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bearhugs.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bearhugs.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bearhugs.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}