Today was stunning beautiful. Blue skies, warm sunshine and that September feeling that this is all too good to be true and tomorrow we will be plunged into hail, biting East winds and insufferable dreariness. It is that St Augustine thing about “Lord make me chaste – but not yet”. We need rain and frost – but not yet.
Most of today was passed in the pleasant company of Martin Kelley – water meister supreme – looking at problem ponds and a new and interesting project involving a waterfall under which you should be able to walk. I first met Martin while filming Small Town Gardens with Andrew Fisher Tomlin.
Andrew is now terribly distinguished and is president of the Society of Garden Designers in which capacity he improves the image of garden designers and is photographed in a series of very well cut jackets. When we were filming together we frolicked in a welsh stream wearing wetsuits.
I have never felt the urge to join the SGD – partly because I am slightly worried that they might declare me an unqualified fraud and partly on the Groucho Marx principle of not joining anything that would have me. My main pleasure comes from reading their magazine and marvelling at the occasional staggering pomposity of its correspondents. Sometimes it is important to remember that Garden Design is a deeply frivolous profession and should not be taken too seriously.
I am listening to Azalea by Louis Armstrong and the picture is of Cimicifuga James Compton.