Late for the garden shoe

Ages ago, Mirinda put an event in our calendar. It was for the Spring Garden Show (which her phone decided was actually a ‘shoe’) at Loseley Park. Last night we checked that it was still on. There was no mention of it on the Loseley website. I found a couple of mentions on other websites, however, so we thought we’d drive over on the off chance it was still on. It seemed odd that the Loseley website didn’t have a big notice declaring that it was not on though.

We hopped into Max and took off.

It wasn’t on. We thought that we’d go and visit the walled garden at Loseley (given we were there anyway) but, apart from special events, Loseley Park isn’t actually open on Saturdays. We turned Max around and headed for Secretts instead.

We still need more bedding plants for the Crazy Bed so we wandered around the garden centre which is now owned by Squires rather than Secretts, and collected a load of flowers to plant in the bed.

Given driving Max is so much fun, we decided to go home via Haslemere which isn’t the shortest route but is arguably the more pleasant. And, given we were there, we decided to stop off at Darnley’s for lunch.

It’s been ages since I’ve been to Haslemere and I was amazed at the changes. Not least of all, the fact that Darnley’s isn’t Darnley’s anymore. Actually that’s not entirely true. It has another name but is ‘at Darnley’s’ or so the sign declares.

And so we sat and had a pleasant lunch outside, watching the people wander by, remembering how often we used to do it when we lived locally.

After a visit to the kitchen shop (for a roasting tin) and the French deli (for some sherry and galettes) we drove Max back home.

I then set to, planting the new flora in the drifts indicated by Mirinda’s placement. She’d chosen ones with flowers on them because Sophie and Tom are coming tomorrow and it always looks better with something other than green to show for our labours.

I then had one my rare kitchen failures.

I had decided to make a lemon drizzle cake for tomorrow and so, while Mirinda took the girls for a stroll across Hankley, I hit the baking. Everything looked perfect when I put it in the oven; it smelled wonderful while it was cooking. The problem was when I took it out when the allotted time was up.

If it’s possible for a cake to sink deeper than the actual depth of a cake mix, my lemon drizzle cake did just that. I’ve never seen a cake fall so fast or so far. To say it was a disaster would be to put it far too mildly. It was, basically, warm cake mix with a few crunchy bits on it. I would have included a photograph but was far too devastated to take one.

Two things occur to me as to why it didn’t work. Firstly there may have been too much baking powder or, more probable, it didn’t cook long enough. I’m determined to get it right, though, and will try again…some day. When Mirinda had recovered from her laughter, she suggested I call Dawn (of cake fame from last weekend) for some advice.

I managed to get over the disappointment with Tacos for Tea with my own guacamole.

Oh and, later we discovered that the Garden Shoe was actually in APRIL and not MAY. So we missed it by a month.