Chelsea, Gardens and Smoked Sugar

I look forward every year to The Chelsea Flower Show and it must have played with my conscience as I arranged at the end of last week to go with Ali to the Garden Centre at Banstead on Monday.  We were also accompanied by Norbert, a guest (who also happened to be a landscape gardener and inventor) who preferred to spend the day with us buying plants, then spending the day sightseeing whilst his brother was attending meetings at the Chelsea Flower Show.  And the biggest bonus of all was, not only did he buy a plant for my garden, he then spent the balance of the day helping Ali organise the garden for the summer!  How wonderful was that!   

I have had another guest arrive today who is also a ‘landscape gardener’ and spent an hour or so in the sunshine this afternoon being shown his portfolio of gardens he has designed for clients, they include patios, panoramic rooftops, large estates and small city gardens.  This is why I love my work, I get days like this talking to experts and I pick up such great tips.

It has also been a week for equipment breaking down, so I have two call outs booked, one for the Quooker (my can’t live without hot tap) and my Siemens American Fridge (also can’t live without filtered water and ice).  The Quooker man arrived at 6.30am on Friday – he fixed my hot tap and was on his way around 8.20am which was great as I was able to get all the breakfast laid out and be ready for my guests by 9am. I was quite impressed by the early start and wished all repair engineers started work at this time. The Quooker needed descaling as the valve was leaking and I am not that techie.  It was just as well as I needed an entirely new part – all covered by the service – and have put a note in the diary to book the next service in 2018.  I was very impressed with the repair service as they had it all sorted within three working days!

There is no smoke without fire…  I bought a tin from M&S of Bourbon Smoked Sugar – it has been a huge hit.  Norbert and his brother loved the sugar in their coffee, they got a double whammy as they would sit outside having a cigarette with the first coffee of the day and my other guests decided it worked best for them on their French toast .  There is no accounting for a person’s taste buds.      

I love finding new products and sharing them with guests, it’s such a fun thing to do.  We have a long weekend coming up, so we are taking a couple of days off to relax and our next guests check in next week on Tuesday.  Wishing you all a great bank holiday weekend.