Christmas Lacey

We missed the Christmas festivities at Polesden Lacey in 2020, with out last such visit being at the end of 2019, noticed at reference 1. But this year we made it, on Saturday a week ago. Car park busy at 10:30 and the duty trusty's were hard at it, although not to the point of deploying the overflow park.

House and gardens all very festive, with the inside with much decoration, most of the outside statues wrapped up in white against the white, but various goings on. No Christmas sheds that we could see, so perhaps they were not the big success hoped for.

On entry, the first item of interest was this planter in what might be called the outer bailey, before you get into the stable yard proper. With the house proper being a hundred yards beyond that. No idea what the planter started life at, but it was interesting how the modern gray paint had lifted off the steel (or iron), leaving strange pattern on the surface. How did this pattern come to be? How did all this pattern fight its way out of the second law of thermodynamics which some people claim means that everything tends to grey noise, the sort of thing you used to get on televisions after hours. Or in this case brown noise.

The interior was all very dark, with the idea being to draw the eye and attention to the Christmas things put together by the volunteers. But one could still see some of the stuff. Not least this what I take to be German porcelain. Not my sort of thing, although one does admire the workmanship that can turn these figures out from lumps of clay.

A few roses hanging on in the rose garden, but the winter garden not quite what it had been a bit over a month later (as it were), earlier in the year.

A yucca in the herbaceous border.

Noticed for the curious shoots, underneath the pruning cut at the front. If they make it through the winter, will they be heading up or down?

Back to the cafeteria in the stable block, where we could have had hot food, Christmas food with a cracker even, but settled for rolls. In my case a couple of tuna and sweetcorn filled brown baps. Filling but dull - not as good as the baguettes offered a week or so previously at Wisley. Waitresses looked very young - perhaps all the local lasses who looked too young to work bars.

And so home to our own jasmine, in full winter flight. Top shaped with our shiny new Bosch hedge trimmer - but I am not sure that I would not have preferred the top square cut rather than rounded off. Would have fitted in with the lines of the house better.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/11/grotto.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/fake-136.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/piano-51.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/01/winter-garden.html.