The reason for the trip down south was primarily because it was my mother's ninetieth birthday on Saturday. But before we could get to her my brother phoned to ask where we were. Our conversation was brief. We had a good afternoon with my mother. We took her out for a run in the car then I replaced the desiccated remains of the flowers that I sent her for Christmas with the flowers that I had given her for her birthday and re-arranged the flowers that my brother had given her. We had birthday cake and tea and a chat.
Whilst down there we also had to visit my mother-in-law's flat in Surbiton (now sold) to read the gas and electric meters and we managed to squeeze in a quick walk around the Royal Horticultural Society's garden at Wisley.
We have been members of the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) for some years, as the Wisley garden is only a few miles from where we use to live, but when we lived down there there was always something else to do and we rarely visited the garden. Now, whenever we are down there, we attempt to visit the garden. The weather for our walk around Wisley was fine and sunny. There were snowdrops everywhere, quite a few crocuses and some hellebores but surprisingly not one daffodil. However, the dogwood by the lake was spectacular (see above). Some areas of the Wisley garden were cordoned off to visitors for a variety of different reasons. The most notable being as a result of the recent heavy snow which had resulted in damage to the branches of many trees.