Royal Cabbage Patch looking very well, with lots of stuff coming on. And we were lucky enough to catch a broad bean picking in progress, by an older chap who said he put in a day's volunteering a week. Rather a pleasant form of volunteering, I should imagine, although I would need to live a lot nearer, say easy walking, before I would be tempted.
From there to the roses, a little past their best with all the hot weather, but still pretty good.
To the Tilt Yard for a 'Maids of Honour' tart. Good enough, but I am fairly sure they were not made with the puff pasty used by the people at reference 2, also claiming to be the one and only original recipe. Maybe I need to collar a cook on my next visit, against the unlikely chance that the people holding the catering franchise at the Palace actually make the things on the spot.
To the wilderness to find the gate into the formal gardens unmanned and firmly shut, so we had to walk back around to the front door. Or rather the side door, as the base court was full of the furniture for some summer music event.
Through the Palace and into the gardens to find a fair amount of furniture against the upcoming garden show, mainly an extravaganza for garden equipment suppliers, but I think there are a few flowers as well. Not my sort of thing at all, although I dare say BH would cope well enough.
Inspected the round pond and the southern wing of the canal, the southern wing of the herbaceous border, which last was a bit betwixt and between, with the spring stuff done and the high summer stuff to come. But there was still plenty to look at. Took a left into the privy garden, looking as well as ever. Truly, an all year round garden. One gardener who looked as if he was in imminent danger of getting sun stroke.
Just the weather to appreciate the well-shaded beech walk running up the western side of the garden. And it was provided with a bench, with our only beef being that the view from the bench was rather blocked by one of the heritage boards scattered about the place, just visible lower right in the snap above.
The two sunken gardens were in very fine form, well up to jigsaw standard. Or even chocolate box, to go with the chocolate attraction back inside the Palace. One bright with summer flowers, one more subdued. The jigsaw being noticed at reference 4, although I seem to have misdirected myself, with that jigsaw appearing to be the flashy sunken garden rather than the subtle green one next door. Beggars can't be choosers I suppose.
Through the Mantegna gallery, not to find a way back into the Palace proper, so out and through Fountain Court again to the café in the kitchen wing to take pie, mash and pease. The gallery was being looked after by a lone lady trustee, ensconced behind her desk. We discussed the chances of falling asleep on such a duty and the probability that Mantegna had never seen an elephant in the life, relying instead on hearsay, illustrated and otherwise.
Almost packed up at that point, but actually settled for a quick visit to the Cumberland Gallery, where we were not best pleased to find that the series of views of the Grand Canal had been taken away, in favour of a series of views of Daphne with Cupid, or some such. Not without interest, but we would have preferred the Canaletto's. On the other hand, I did spend some time with a couple of small Rembrandt portraits. Losing my taste for the Gainsborough cartoon, which I had found so striking on first acquaintance. Noticed on various occasions, from the time the gallery first opened, but illustrated at reference 3.
PS: any connection between ensconced and the stone of scone? The OED makes none such in its treatments of ensconce, sconce and scone, while wikipedia talks of the obscure origin of the name of the place concerned, possibly on the Gaelic outer fringes of the Aryan language system.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/hampton-court.html.
Reference 2: https://theoriginalmaidsofhonour.co.uk/.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/diana.html.
Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=hunt+green+hampton.
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