POST PARTY PICK UP

We’ve just done the fifteen load of washing. Well that’s what it feels like. It’s the following day, post party clean up at our house.

I’m out in the garden again to see the extent of the damage. Like inside the house, I am pleasantly surprised. Years ago if I went to a party the doorways would be filled with bulging dustbin liner bags full of beer cans and bottles and there would be a thin film of grease all over the walls. The post synopsis of our party is that the house has been left tidier that it was before it began. The garden also appears to have escaped without any damage.

On the driveway I can see trails of burst water balloons, I knew about these, as it was me that stood at the sink for an hour at the party and filled them up. Apart from these colourful pieces of plastic and two skateboards that have lost their wheels, there are no other signs of destruction.

Marquee
We set up our marquee on the off chance that the weather would be wet, but we were lucky enough to have a completely dry day. Because of this we didn’t really use this protective covering so it doesn’t need any cleaning. All we need is a dry day to take it down and put the washing line back up. The rain has now started so this might not be for a while yet.
Decorating outside
The white marquee looked a bit sparse when I set it up so I added pieces of ivy to the inside corners to break up the colour. I copied the idea from the fabulously decorated churches I go to around the peninsula taking photos of weddings for the paper. I also put vases of cut garden flowers and shrubs on tables and corners of the patio to brighten things up a bit. We don’t really go in for flowers much in the garden but we had plenty of sweet peas to brighten up the dull corners.


Party spuds
Most of the food was confined to the tables in the kitchen or the decking and we had three dogs running around on the day so any scraps dropped by the guests were soon picked up. The potato salad went down well. I had dug up two different types of spud in one bed as I couldn’t remember which ones were the earlies. It turned out that I did them just in time as blight was beginning to take hold. The crop was a bit of a disappointment though (probably because they were supposed to be maincrop spuds) and I was left with only a bowlful from a whole bed. There was enough to make a tasty salad, though with all the digging, washing and cutting out the bad bits of the golf ball and smaller sized spuds, Julie commented, after about 2 hours, that it might have been handier to go to the supermarket..

Fingerlings
One guest came with a big bowl of fingerling potatoes that were just boiled up and coated with a drop of melted butter. They went down very quickly. Fingerling potatoes are turning up in the poshest places these days, such as the menus of some of the country's finest restaurants. There is a novelty value about them and like the salad leaves, Rocket, they command a very high price in the shops even though they are just as easy to grow as any other variety. These spuds are grown for their small size. Choose between the waxy type and ones that resemble the balls of flour we get from some of our local roadside sellers.


HUGE SUCCESS
All in all then the party was a huge success. The garden came into it’s own and gave the children plenty of space to go crazy and there were enough nooks and crannies for them to hide. The adults on the other hand made good use of the decking and seating areas closer to the house. I also had some very pleasing comments about how well the garden was looking. I have a theory that if the grass is cut and the hedges look neat then everything else around it looks good, even a bed full of weeds.

The party was a great motivator for getting everything sorted so I will need to get planning for a Christmas one to get everything tidy for the winter.