to London

You travel, you suffer the inconvenience, you see beautiful things, you go home and it's done. If you traveled well, you will have stimulated your senses deeply. The show you bought tickets for, whether a classical performance or Taylor Swift, moved you to tears, the museum opened your eyes to new art forms, the meal you ate was like no other. You're ready to do all this again: a new place, with the potential for new impressions, new beautiful parks, new tasty foods, here we go! And again! It's like me to live like this. Soaking in what I see, whom I meet, what I eat. But every once in a while, I demand more of myself. 

On this trip, I demanded more. 

Poland required of me that extra charge. I needed more stamina, for one thing! Social perseverance. You have to remember that I am a quiet person who rarely these days steps out of her home orbit. I see friends. Occasionally. Certainly not every day for periods of 6, 7, 8 hours at a time, nine days in a row. That intensity works beautifully for those friends who are almost family, but otherwise -- it's work!

Sissinghurst -- it asked that I focus with care, with an open mind and heart. It asked that I bring back thoughts and images I've had that lay dormant for decades now. It very much set forth the stage for my future conduct -- in the farmette flower fields and beyond. In other words, I needed to get ready for it, and I needed to take away more than just a stack of flower notes and photos and the occasional souvenir. 

All this has been exhausting and as a result, I've consistently slept poorly. (The more mentally tired I am, the worst the night promises to be.) It hasn't helped that I seem to have shot my unreplaced knee early on and the pain from that is irritating, especially at 3 o'clock in the morning. I took a selfie yesterday in the gardens and looking at it, I thought -- my, but I suddenly look ancient! It may have been the lighting. I don't think it was the lighting.

But this last night, my next to last night in Europe and final night at Sissinghurst -- I slept beautifully. The magic of Sissinghurst? Maybe. More likely, the contentment that follows when you truly believe that you did the best you could and did not shy away from the challenges. (And nothing fell apart and you didn't get sick and the weather was like a gift!)

I wake up smiling. Good morning, Sissinghurst!

It's going to be a beautiful day!

I go down to breakfast early. So that I can sit by the window. Mmmm, wonderful breakfast options once again.

 

And once again I go on to a second course, this time just porridge. 

It's just after 9 when I am done and packed and ready to go. Richard will be driving me to the station in Staplehurst, but not for another hour.

I go for a walk. Toward the Estate buildings first. Closed of course, but still, it gives me a few minutes to just stand outside and look. And reinforce all that I have taken away from here. 

It also gives me a chance to see a family member walk over to the private wing. Who are you? In age, you could be the son of the grandson. [Adam is the grandson of Vita and Harold. He has five children -- three sons by a first wife, two daughters by his second wife who is the very well known and well regarded author and gardener, Sarah Raven. But Adam and Sarah rarely come down to Sissinghurst. Rumor has it that they have a fraught relationship with the National Trust. Something to do with the mini series that was made about Sissinghurst and the Trust and Adam and Sarah's plan to do organic farming and grow fruits and vegetables here. There were issues. You can watch some of it on YouTube.]

(I think this cottage too is used by the family)

I walk on. To the vegetable garden, because the walk there passes the stretch of countryside that I find so beautiful...

And because the vegetable garden remains open 24/7. And, of course, there's beauty in all that grows here.

As I study the layout, admire the berries, the pea pods, the sunflowers, my thoughts go back to the Estate itself: it attracts visitors from all over the world, but it's not as if it's ever packed. Right now, in August, there are no buses dropping off tired groups of seniors (though there are plenty of seniors! Gardens always attract an older crowd). It is no Giverny. It's tame here. You dont have to come in the last hour before closing to feel you have the place to yourself. [I'm sure it gets more crowded in spring. Understandable. August is a slow month in the gardens. Vita wrote this about August: "dull time, heavy time, when everything has lost its youth and is overgrown and mature." Still, Monet's garden attracts 500 000 visitors each year. Sissinghurst -- more like 100 000.]

And I wonder -- the people who come for the gardens, are they the live and let live type, without the judgemental horror that I think would belong to those who find unusual relational behavior to be reprehensible? Can you even separate Sissinghurst, the gardens, from Sissinghurst, the estate once owned and managed by Vita and Harold? Should you?

 

 

 

It's a good ending to my visit here.

 

On the drive to the station, we talk about Sissinghurst. Who lives there now, their relationship to the National Trust, the future of all these mansions in Britain, given that even the wealthy here are often cash poor and cannot pay the required taxes on their inheritance, let alone maintain the properties to a "proper standard."

Though many of these estates wind up being donated to the National Trust, Sissinghurst is different, in that a handful of visitors can actually stay on the premises (me, for example).  Richard tells me there's no other National Trust property quite like it. So I ask him how is it that he and Anna became "owners for a decade." Perhaps predictably, it's complicated. Richard was the vicar in the village. He and Anna befriended the previous "owners" and when their time was up, he was ready for the challenge. Anna, who has a background in hospitality, was less certain about plunging forth. But plunge they did and put in a bid, and then it was down to a dozen finalists, and then down to six, and finally theirs won. And now day in and day out, she is baking cakes for tea and overseeing the kitchen in the mornings and corresponding with silly people like me who want to know about the local restaurants and whether a certain room is bright and sunny, while he is attending to the finances and acting as a taxi service to those (again, like me) who come here without a car.

Perhaps the only good thing about this kind of work is that it shuts down for three winter months.

You mean you're open in March already? Good to know!

(Train ride to London)

And now I am back in my hotel, the Knightsbridge, a lovely place in a godawful (from my perspective) part of town. Or is it that all of London just seems this way to me? Crowded noisy and dirty? (Think: rubbish on the streets, heaping trash bags waiting at the curb for who knows how long for pick up... like New York! Which is one reason why I do not like New York.)

I would have tried another neighborhood of the city, a quieter one, with a more neighborhoody feel to it, but I was tied to this one because of my missing suitcase. Which did eventually show up here. But, not to fuss. I do like the hotel -- it's small and charming and once again they upgraded me to a giant room for who knows what reason. Maybe I joined some kind of loyalty program when booking. I tend to do that sort of thing.

One more impediment to my arrival in London: somewhere between Sissinghurst and London I blew out my lower back. Maybe I lifted a heavy bag too quickly. The fault is always with a sudden movement or a sudden heave, so now I am without a functional back and without a functional knee. This gives me an excuse not to do much this afternoon. You've got your view of the Parliament Buildings and Big Ben from the train, what else could you possibly want from this city!

Still, I do want my coffee, preferably with a pastry, so with great difficulty I get myself up and moving to venture out onto Brompton Road in search of a coffee shop. I'll give you one pretty sight of a side street:

And then the great monster road itself,  Brompton, though I've spared you the sidewalk with the piled trash. I have my standards!

Oh, and of my "lunch." I consider myself a bit of an expert on blueberry tarts, having sampled (and documented here on Ocean such samplings) at least a dozen this year alone, from France to Poland and now England, and I will say, this one in London is one heck of a good blueberry tart. They tell me it has elderflower something or other in it. I couldn't hear what exactly because older people cannot distinguish words easily when there is a din of music and loud talking in the dining area.

Toward evening I set out once again. I made a reservation in a restaurant that sounded just too good to pass by, even though google told me it's a 37 minute walk from my hotel and with my back and knee issues, I knew I needed to double that. 

I walked through Hyde Park. It was green. It was loud. It had many bicycles. People seemed happy.

(And I found an expanse that actually had few people or cyclists in it. It was not easy.)

 

(I also found a guy wearing a t-shirt which, if seen by my grandkids, would cause them to exclaim to me "hey, you say that all the time!" True. I do.)

And then back into the city. Having some time to kill, I side step onto nearby Oxford Street. 

 

 

I already know that I'm not a fan of it. I've always disliked it because it's so packed with so many irrelevant stores, but I'm near Selfridges, yet another department store (I've already checked Harvey Nichols earlier today) and I still haven't found anything for the kids. Clothes they can use in early fall.  

Nope. Not here either. These stores are for foreigners who have a few oil fields among their holdings, or Brits who talk in hushed voices lest someone recognize that they are toff. (I learned that word today! One of the restaurant people explained -- posh. It means posh.)

The restaurant, by the way, is called Apricity. 

 

 

 I had to look that word up -- it's a new one for me. It means the light and warmth of the sun. That sounds kind of new agey and it definitely is not what drew me here. What did pull me in was the write up (and of course the reviews). It's not cheap, but then nothing in this city is cheap. My tart and coffee eaten in humble surroundings had cost me $21.56. (I just looked at my credit card notice.) And honestly -- the dinner total was not that far away from yesterday's at the Milk House! Pretty remarkable considering I am in London.

About the restaurant and what drew me to it: Apricity uses (in their words) hyper-seasonal sustainable produce from small-scale farmers and locally foraged ingredients, with a low-waste approach to cooking. They get not a Michelin rosette, but a Michelin green star. I read about British vegetables here, and regeneratively farmed meat, and sustainably caught fish of the British Isles. And they pay a fair wage to their staff. This is a big deal to me, having worked in a restaurant for several years and having seen what happens when cooks, dish washers and waitstaff rely on discretionary tipping to get by. Here, the chef-owner is a woman and in London there are very few women chefs in good restaurants.

 

Yes, but how is the food???

It is very, very good. I'm going to say it because it's true: it was probably the best dinner I've ever had in any of my trips to London. 

It started with a fabulous Negroni drink: they collect leftover red wine and make vermouths out of them. This they add to their Negronis. For the meal, I ordered the stuffed zucchini flower with zucchini pieces and cucumber slices on the side. Pickled cucumber slices (they called it "smacked cucumber"). The British are very prone to adding pickled stuff to a cold dish.  

For the second course I ordered the mushrooms. 

 

 

 

Black pearl and oyster, over Flanders wheat. Hearing about where they were grown (in the city of London) and what was used to stimulate their growth was scary (this is London: anything grown here to me is suspect), but the combination of crispy and creamy was totally wonderful. 

And I ordered dessert. I had to! I asked for the strawberry dish which also had a basil granita and I believe cashew cream. It also had something crispy and sticky in it, which added a pleasant crunch, but the most memorable things was the combination of all these flavors. Outstanding! 

Are the British ready for this gem of a restaurant??

The walk home was... long. I considered hailing a cab, but the thought of that was somewhat terrifying as the traffic in the city remains dense, despite the fees imposed on drivers within the center. When I had asked about that on the long and congested ride from the airport the cabbie laughed and said -- the fees changed nothing. Everyone just pays them. And by the way, it's unfair! You own a car, you shouldn't have to pay to drive it. He told me!

 

 

So I walked. And I thought about how strange that I had bumped into a Taylor Swift concert in Scotland, I had bumped into the tail end of one in Warsaw, and now again -- Taylor Swift is here, in London. For you Swifties out there, let me reassure you, I am not just secretly here to attend her show!

And that was London for me. Tomorrow morning, I leave. To return home.

with love...

Sissinghurst

For several weeks now I've been reading a book about Sissinghurst Gardens written by Sarah Raven (wife of Vita's grandson, Adam), with extensive commentary included from Vita herself. (And I added to this yesterday by purchasing Adam's book as well.) I'll read a few pages, put it down, think about it, returning to it at another time. It's been like a retreat to another planet! Creative side-stepping into a world that I can't fully grasp because of course, I'm not Vita, I have no superior gardening knowledge and so often I feel my creative processes have been pulverized by the demands of daily living. Still, you learn a lot from listening closely to the words of brilliant people who poured their heart and soul into the project, laboring over it as only Vita and Harold could.

And now, as a bonus, I get to step into that world.

I wake up in Sissinghurst. At the Farmhouse that is part of the estate. (For details about why and how and what's it all about anyway, please read yesterday's post, below.)

 (out my window)

I did not get much sleep. I almost gave up on loading all the photos last night, but you know how that goes -- you invest all that time to get it started, you want to finish it. Especially since this place is so good, so important to so much of what I do back home. I want to show it off here as best as I can. So I persevered. Until past 1 a.m. when I finally clicked "publish." 

Of course, I could have slept in. No one is pushing me out, making any demands on me. But with dawn, I grew restless to be up. I need a boring tedious day to keep me in bed past the wee hours. A day at Sissinghurst is neither tedious nor boring!

Breakfast at the Sissinghurst Farmhouse is wonderful. I could have stopped with this:

Instead I kept on going, with this:

And now how to do this day... That's a puzzler. It's cloudy, but with delightful peeks of sunshine. I really have been lucky with weather on this trip! Temps are now hovering in the low 70sF (around 22C). Could you imagine a better day to explore a garden?

Still, I can't just walk the garden paths back and forth all day. Besides, Sissinghurst doesn't open its gates until 11. 

Ah, but here is more to do here: Sissinghurst is vast, extending on all sides beyond the structures and walls within which are the "rooms" of the garden. The full estate lies on 460 acres of land and this includes pasture, lakes and forests. There is a public path that navigates the property. I want to take that path this morning.

Heading out past the quiet now Estate buildings...

 

... I pick up the trail as leads me straight toward the vegetable garden. This, too, is not part of the enclosed space for which you need an entrance ticket. (Meaning you can visit the vegetable garden any time and for free.)

 

 

 To improve the soil's health, the gardeners here use the "No Dig" method of planting: you don't disturb what's already there but instead, heap compost onto the existing soil  (the type of mulch or compost that has no weed seeds, which, for us at the farmette, would be impossible), and plant in that. The roots will work their way deep into the soil of course. 

Let's take a look at how successful this is:

 

Very successful.

And this is how they keep the hungry beasts out of the veggie plants!

 

I see raspberries, being picked by an older woman. I ask if she wants help, but she says no, she likes doing it herself. Maybe she's afraid I'd eat more than I'd pick.

Such abundance!

Sweet peas, with a close-up showing the wet drops leftover from the night's rain...

One final look...

And now I pick up the path again -- initially, densely bordered by shrubs and trees, so that you see little of the landscape, but concentrate instead on picking out the sounds of birds. New for me: the Jackdaw and the Chiffchaff. 

 

 

Soon though, the path turns and you see a panorama that takes your breath away (note Vita's Tower...)!

Talk about your iconic English country walk!

 

(The poplar: my idea of the perfect roadside tree)

And after a bit more, I come around to a view of the Farmhouse.

I dont immediately go in though. It's nearly 11 and I'm itching to have another look at the garden. I come to the entrance and as luck would have it, I'm the first inside. No, not pushy, just eager!

Hey, a daylily (see below)! I read that they systematically deadhead flowers here once a week. There's something to that: you do need to clean up a garden and encourage new growth periodically throughout the summer. But of course, day lilies offer a special kind of challenge. They're present here, but not even a fraction of the quantities I have back home.

Ah, the Purple Garden! When Vita wrote about planting one, many doubted her ability to create something exciting. Purple is a dark color. It can be dreary in the garden. And yet -- she succeeded. She pulled together shades of purple: some pink, some plum, some dark foliage. It's in fact one of my favorite corners at Sissinghurst.

(more from the Purple Garden...)

I come back to the Estate again in the afternoon. (One ticket allows you to go in and out all day.)

First, a coffee pause at the restaurant. The one that uses fruits and veggies from the veggie garden. 

Then I look around once again. I zero in this time. On the entrance building: to the left, you have the library, aka as the Big Room, to the right you have the private residence of the descendants of Vita and Harold. I'm not looking to spot anyone there, but I am looking at the combination of roses and clematis climbing the two sides of this (private) window.

And here's a garden "room" that looks impressive from this new for me point of entry.

And this vine inside the first courtyard: I love its delicacy, even as it dangles such strong flowers.  I look it up on my plant identifier -- True Indigo. Really? Is Kent, where I am now, so much warmer than Wisconsin? (True Indigo is hardy down to Zone 10. Madison is at Zone 5.) Yet another reason why Vita had it so much easier out here to grow with abundance!

Abundance. This of course, brings me right back to the issue of her wealth. Knole House, her beloved family home, is no small property. In fact it was one of the largest houses in England. (It sits just 20 miles from Sissinghurst.) Of course, because she was a girl, she could not inherit it. But as I already noted, she had plenty of money from her family. She and Harold were not lacking in anything, small bucket collecting cash from visitors notwithstanding.

And you have to wonder -- isn't it easier to be as "eccentric" or unconventional as she was, when you're wealthy? 

I wondered, too, if losing Knole to a male cousin irritated her. Accounts of her relationship with Virginia Woolf uniformly attribute the break up between the two to political and social stances. Virginia was too "feminist" for Vita. This is peculiar to me. Vita was probably Virginia's first lover (outside her marriage). Vita, on the other hand, had plenty of affairs before and after she was smitten with Virginia. And who had the tougher history? Almost for sure not Vita. Virginia had been repeatedly molested by her half-brother as a child and she suffered from bi-polar disease to boot. Vita remained bound to her at some level until Virginia's death, but at the same time, she was planting flowers at Sissinghurst when Virginia drowned. (Vita did blame herself for this death.) Vita was always going to be well cared for throughout her life. (Not that Virginia was poor: you could say she was born into the intellectual elite of London.) Complicated stories run through these gardens!

I return to the Farmhouse for tea. It looks like today we have a walnut cake and scones (with cream and jam) again. I load up and take my foods outside. It's that lovely out there!

And again I return to the Gardens. My third time today! Just before they close. I look now to see if there is anything I missed, anything that I especially want to remember...

 

Okay, with that I am done. (My train leaves tomorrow before the opening hour here, so I really am done.)

And now I have to walk to the village of Sissinghurst, where I have a reservation at another local eatery. This one is called the Milk House.

It's not a long walk: I'd say it's about 25 minutes each way. But Richard told me not to use the road (narrow, with traffic, no space for pedestrians). Instead, he explained I should cut through the cattle field, then cross over to the forest. This should get me to the village in good time.

When I was a kid, I took solo forest walks all the time! I never gave it a thought. But in the U.S. I learned to be more cautious. When I return to Europe, I never know how much caution I should retain.  I've done plenty of solo treks in Scotland. Is England any different?

Needless to say, I meet no one, except for two boisterous jumpy dogs and an indifferent owner.

(In Sissinghurst, the village)

People like Three Chimneys better, but I have to say, my dinner at the Milk House was quite alright. Lots of fish, lots of veggies. I drank Kent wine and that was good too!

 

We're entering the second half of August and still, it is totally light when I step outside after dinner. The sun in London sets at 8:20 today. (In Madison is just a little earlier -- at 7:58.)

Retracing my steps is easier -- I recognize the landscape.

The undulating fields with the short apple trees...

 

The forest...

The cow pasture -- all in the evening sun...

Just as in the forest, I walk with greater confidence on the return (I know the path, I know what I'm up against), so too, I write my post with the wisdom gained from last night's terribly long ordeal. I've been loading pics throughout today, so that I wont be pushing the job into the wee hours of the night.

What to leave you with from my forays into Vita's garden? I suppose I must go back to her climbing roses. They are everywhere. They are exquisite. They were loved by her and underappreciated by many.

With roses and love...