Garden day 2...

Today John and I were invited to Aunty Friday's to see her woodland garden in full bloom with swathes of wild delphiniums.  Aunty Friday is a relative of Elena's.  I believe (although I may well have the family relationship wrong) that her husband Stavraki was Elena's Dad's brother.  Aunty Friday is from Brunei and her name is actually Aunty Vowi (not necessarily spelt correctly) but she took on the name Paraskevi (Friday) when she came here which I think may be something to do with her religion but again I could be wrong.  Anyway a couple of weeks ago I bumped into her in Paps shopping and she said I should come round.  I think something got lost a bit in translation when she phoned earlier this week because I had thought she was just inviting John and I for wander in the garden and a cuppa but she had expected me to extend the invitation to all my friends and had baked cakes in anticipation. John woke feeling even more poorly than he had previously and said he didn't think he should go because Stavraki's aged mother lives with them and John didn't want to pass on his 'man-flu' to someone who is pretty frail already so I pitched up on my own unaware that she was expecting a bus load of nurses from Elgin.  Still she didn't seem to mind and we wandered around the garden together.

Stavraki's house sits in splendid isolation overlooking Chrysochou bay with uninterrupted views.  The spot was specifically chosen and the house built so that they would have no immediate neighbours - there is a lot of land and the house looks massive although in reality when you get inside it isn't so big and has a nice homely family feel to it.

With so much land the gardens are left to have an unstructured and wild feel about them but there is room to have massive areas dedicated to one particular flower to give maximum impact.  Aunty Friday says she likes to chose plants which will colonise and self seed and she has given me sees from the delphiniums -  the first year I got one single stem but this year there are more in evidence and they range from pale pink to dark blue.  In return I gave her some Nigella seeds and she has a little display of those which will multiply in due course.  I have promised her that John will try and get some seeds for her when he returns to visit his mum next week.  If he is successful then I can go and see her again and arrange for Di to come with me as I know she would like to see the garden and it will make up for me not bringing anyone with me this time!

Garden tour completed we retired to the cool of the kitchen where Aunty Friday, Stravraki's Mum and I ploughed our way through enough Chiffon Cake to feed an army, in fact she gave me quarter of one of them to take back for John.  If you haven't ever had Chiffon Cake it is absolutely delicious, the lightest and fluffiest cake you could wish to eat but apparently is an absolute bugger to make as you need a specific tin and you apparently need to spot weld the cake to the tin and then prize it out and cut off the overly cooked bits - sounds awful but tastes divine.