Kew Extravaganzas

Kew Gardens are trying to keep the punters' interest going through the winter months with a Tropical Extravaganza - orchids and such-like in the steamy atmosphere of the Princess of Wales Conservatory. Well, I'm as keen as the next man on a nice bit of colour, and I'm a season ticket-holder, so off I pedalled. Down to the river, then right turn along the Embankment. Here you go for the London picture postcard home:

 

Luvverly - if it wasn't for that lamp-post...

The river was flowing fast, so I naturally assumed the tide was going out. Except it wasn't: the water level was rising and the tide was coming in. All that rain...

 

So...to Kew. Inside the Tropical Extravaganza you could hardly move for cameras and tripods.

 

Somehow, though, I wasn't quite in the mood...

There's this familiar argument about how our stone-age tastes aren't suited for living in the modern world. Food, for instance: back in the old hunter-gatherer days, so we're told, a sweet tooth was no bad thing. Gorge yourself on ripe fruit while you've got the chance, because your next few meals are going to involve gnawing on bits of an old carcass after the hyenas have finished with it. So now we just go to the supermarket, stock up on sweets and biscuits, and get disgustingly fat.

Same with the visuals, I was thinking (though not the fat bit). A liitle bit of pink or violet's lovely, but too much and it's like walking around inside a chocolate box - ribbons and all:

The sight of an orchid should really be something you come across only after hacking for weeks through the Amazon jungle, swatting away mosquitoes, unmentionable crawly things trying to eat bits of you, with the constant threat of the hostile Yanomami tribesmen - never seen, but their relentless drummimg keeping you awake every night; not to mention the odd poisoned dart like the one which did for poor Carruthers in such an unpleasant manner. Despite your colleague's wavering - "dammit, only the two of us left now...commission with the Royal Horticultural Society or not, I don't think I can take much more of this" - you finally spy, through parted branches, as you wipe away the sweat and remove another giant millipede from your trouser leg, a lone crimson flower high up in a tree, hanging out over a waterfall. As you inch along the branch, you see, for an instant, highlighted against the blue sky, a flower of such perfection, of such exquisite beauty, of such a pure untrammelled colour, that for a moment the world stands still and holds its breath....before you hear the crack as the branch breaks and you plunge, clutching that orchid, headlong into the maelstrom below.

And here we were: thousands of rare orchids and bromeliads and anthuriums, straight form the jungle, all laid out for us, and all we had to do was pay out an - admittedly large - sum of money for the price of entry. Somehow, as young Albert noted in a not-dissimilar situation, it just didn't seem right.

Still, no denying; they were lovely:

 

 

But this is England, in February! It's not natural, all this colour, this concentrated beauty. My inner puritan could take no more. Time to step outside and start chewing, as it were, on those bones:

Comments

[Dom]

How do you find time to do all this in mid-week?

[Mick H]

Well, you know, it's all a question of time management.

[DaninVan]

You work nights? ;)

You're absolutely right about the 'over the top' display; sort of like a Gay Pride parade...
(That red ribbon is an abomination.)

[Dom]

Some guy in my part of South Jersey -- he owns the Elephant and Castle restaurants -- has been buying up those red phone booths in your first picture. He says the London government sells them every now and then. He puts them in front of the restaurants. There's no phone, just a nice piece of red that makes the restaurant stand out. In Jersey they're kind of like McDonald's Golden Arches.

[DaninVan]

Holy Hanna! One just showed up in my front yard!!
http://www.doctorwhotoys.net/badwolftardis.jpg

:)

[Richard]

The first photo could be a 60s Doctor Who.

[GMan]

As an orchid grower myself, I tend to agree with you. Massed displays of fluoro pink, gaudy hybrids like those are a bit nauseating. They're definitely more special in smaller numbers. To me the photos of the wintery outside are more lovely, but that's easy for me to say, sitting with the doors open and a cool breeze cooling the place down after a 35 degree day in Western Australia. lol.

On the phone boxes, there's a garden shop that imports them and sells them here. I guess they'll all disappear one day with every man and his dog owning a moile.

[Dom]

I wasted my morning wondering why every man and dog would wear those goofy high shoes called moiles, and then I realized you meant mobile. Well, better than working.

[Mick H]

Yes I briefly wondered what a moile was.