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Friday 20 August 2010

I stole this delicious recipe from a friend who bakes like an angel.

You will need:
Finely chopped rose petals OR rose sugar
OR
English lavender
300g plain flour
100g caster sugar
200g butter

(Make sure you ONLY use English lavender petals; Lavandula augustifolia is ideal as other species can prove quite astringent.)


1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C
2. Cream together the butter and caster sugar. 
3. Add the petals or rose sugar and blend well into the creamed mixture
4. Now sieve flour into the creamed mixture until you get a soft dough. Chill the mixture in the fridge for about an hour.
5. Roll out your dough to the required thickness (about 0.5cm is ideal) Cut out into desired shapes, round and hearts look pretty.

Place them on a pre-greased baking tray and dust lightly with caster sugar.
Bake for approximately 15 minutes until pale golden brown. 
Cool on a wire rack and eat them up. One batch lasts about 3 minutes in our house!

Sunday 15 August 2010

Horseguard Heaven

In the main, I abhor pub gardens. Nasty ill-mown grass, ghastly childrens' play areas where no self-respecting child would be tempted to play, banned dogs and nasty, splintery wooden tables arrayed with lonely ashtrays.

HOWEVER

If you ever happen to be winding by Petworth in West Sussex on a day when the sky is blue above, birds are on the wing, the snail's on the thorn and all's right with the world - then a small diversion to the village of Tillington to the Horse Guards Inn will complete your happiness. It is rare a thing to sit in a pub garden endowed with unpretentious cottage garden charm, careless whimsy and so obviously tended by a loving hand. 

The garden at the Horse Guards Inn is the nearest thing you'll get to a hug. 

 



Delightful touches abound; small upturned terracotta flower pots remove the peril of any sharp snags on the hurdle fencing; sunflowers past their best still sway gaily amongst a profusion of cottage plants providing food for scavenging birds and whirling butterflies alight on the budlejas as you sip your bitter shandy. Scattered hay bales make suprisingly comfy seating amongst more traditional wooden tables and benches whilst courgettes, fennel, white cosmos and herbs all thrive side by side in cheerful harmony. Plants and trees are potted higgeldy-piggedly in old lead planters and old stone flagons decorate the paths.

There are too many seductive touches to this garden than I care to mention. It has no grand planting plan or clever plants and certainly the snottier garden critics amongst you won't see what all the fuss is about. This garden isn't in the style of anything, doesn't try to be something it isn't and therein lies it charm. It's there because a pub needs a garden for the  punters but the wise Misha, the garden's creator and publican, understands that a public space and a private garden needn't be mutually exclusive.


Her husband Sam wryly commented, "You know what they say, a well-tended garden - a neglected husband..." 

(Oh I doubt that very much Sam.) 

Play it again Misha.

P.s.  Sunday lunch was good too and the offered cream teas could not have a more apt backdrop.

Even the log pile was architectural and stylish, whilst no doubt providing a luxury apartment for over-wintering lace wings, so the ecological slant was accommodated too.