A green bucket.

A more leisurely day or two was called for after the walk-a-thon of yesterday. Tuesday morning was spent writing the blog-postings and selecting the photographs of the previous couple of days’ travels. In the early afternoon, I visited a large garden center in which the sight of scores of potted Spring-flower arrangements, statuary and garden implements caused me to wonder what my own garden ‘across the pond’ must look like after the 13” of snow that had just fallen there.

We returned to Merrist Wood Golf Club to again make use of the WiFi to upload bucket-blogs. The only activities to be seen out on our walk (of less than 2 miles) around parts of the very wet course were the gaggling of geese and the comings-and-goings of  some vets, police and RSPCA personnel who there to round up a couple of undernourished stray ponies found languishing in an adjacent field.  

Even less walking was involved on Wednesday. After a morning of being a couch-potato, a trip to another large garden center was in order. In this one,  near Aldershot, we looked at more pots of daffodils and other brightly colored arrangements of various ‘annuals’, numerous ‘water feature’ structures and large tanks of koi carp. We then entered its large cafeteria for a pot of tea and a buttered scone; very British! A few miles away in Farnham is a building called Bourne Mill, parts of which were built more than a thousand years ago. There are more than 2 dozen tiny oddly-shaped and sized rooms on 3 or 4 floors of this old mill-house, into which more than 70 different vendors have inserted all manner of ‘antique’ bric-a-brac for sale. The wooden-beamed, plaster-walled, ‘mind-your-head’ doorways presented an interesting maze-like journey regardless of its contents. Ironically, it was here, in England, that I bought a couple of small brass items that had a Welsh ring-and-theme to them. One was a small dinner-bell figure of a Welshwoman (Jenny Jones) in national dress; the other was of a coalminer, complete with pick and Davey-lamp; kneeling and hewing at the face – as so many hundreds had lost their lives doing, beneath the once-green valleys of Wales in years gone by.  

Thursday’s activity entailed trips to two more antique shops in the Aldershot / Farnham area – neither as interesting as the Bourne Mill shop – and a trip to a rose-garden horticulturist to find a variety of rose called ‘Century’. It was to be for a neighbor who will be 100 in May; the search was unsuccessful – not much of a market for such an item, I’d say!  We also visited a DYI store (it may be affiliated with The Home Depot – same orange colors, anyway) and two supermarkets. One, ASDA, (affiliated with Walmart) has independently operated portable car-wash service. Guys pushing grocery-cart-sized containers of water, soaps, buckets and other car-cleaning paraphernalia walk around the parking lot offering to wash your car while you shop. Sounds like an idea that may have a market in the US – keep your eyes open for one near you!

To be continued . . .