Chelsea Flower Show

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is a garden show held each year on five days in May by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in Chelsea, London. It is the most famous such show in the United Kingdom and part of London's summer social season.

The first Royal Horticultural Society Great Spring Show was held in 1862, at the RHS garden in Kensington. Before this date the RHS had held flower shows from 1833 in their garden in Chiswick [GoogleMaps is your friend if you want to know where these places are!]

The Great Spring Show was held at Kensington for twenty-six years, but in 1888 the RHS decided to move the show to the heart of London. The site chosen was the Temple Gardens, situated between the Embankment and Fleet Street, which had a recorded history dating back to 1307 and which were said to date from the time of the Knights Templar [fun fact: Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades.]

In 1912, the Temple Show was cancelled to make way for the Royal International Horticultural Exhibition. Sir Harry Veitch the great nurseryman, secured the grounds of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, for this one-off event. It proved such a good site for an exhibition that the Great Spring Show was moved there in 1913, where it has taken place almost every year since.

The Chelsea Flower Show receives a lot of publicity. It is attended by 157,000 visitors each year (limited by the capacity of the 11-acre ground), and all tickets must be purchased in advance. In 2005, the show increased from four days to five, with the first two days only open to RHS members. The show is extensively covered on TV and several members of the British Royal Family attend a preview of the show.

One last thing. The Royal Hospital Chelsea is a retirement home and nursing home for former members of the British Army. There were a few roaming the grounds during the show and they let me take their photo. Very cute!

My friend, Pam, and I went on Friday evening to the show and it was PACKED! This is my first time. It kind of reminded of going to a HUGE craft festival, but here, everything is themed to flowers and gardening. Best way I know of how to give you a glimpse of it is to show off my photos, so here you go:

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London Zoo

So, what to do on a nice spring day whilest 'under-employed' in London? Go to the 2010 favourite attraction, the London Zoo.

The London Zoo boasts being the 'oldest scientific zoo', founded over 180 years ago and is the heart of London, in Regents Park. It was opened on 27 April 1828,and was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study. It opened to the public in 1847. Located in the middle of the city, it has plenty of animals to see including lions, camels, giraffes, penguins, tigers, monkeys, sheep [yes, sheep] and meerkats. But no elephants!

Read more: http://www.zsl.org/zsl-london-zoo/

Pam and I went, and I think we saw the entire zoo ... except the aquarium. Apparently, fish are boring. We went into the reptile house [I have brothers and she has boys] and we watched a bug demonstration with a hissing beetle that Pam wanted to pet [why?], but no fish.

This week on Friday the new penguin beach opens.

So, about the meerkats. Have you ever stopped and thought about why they are so popular? They are essentially prairie dogs and although there are prairie dogs in all of the US zoos that I have been to, there are not big lines of people waiting to see them pop out of their tunnels. There are some, but they are not the 'rock star' status that the meerkat enjoys.

I have a theory: Disney released a little movie in 1994 called 'The Lion King'. In it, Timon made all of us aware of meerkats. In fact, the next year, 1995, I went on safari when in both Kenya and South Africa, and the college students I was traveling with always asked the drivers if we could see meerkats. They were like, 'huh?' Lions, rhinos, elephants, giraffes, and hippos, yes! Warthogs, maybe. Meerkats?

Anyway, here in the UK they are HUGELY popular as a car insurance company has created a meerkat colony as their sponsor for their commercial advertising. They even opened their own store in London ... not to buy insurance, but to buy meerkat 'stuff' and so that 'Aleksander' could launch his autobiography.

Lastly, at the height of our employment, we had about 80 staff members, 60 of which were based on London. Our office was FULL! And when one of my staff who worked from home, mostly, was in the office, she noticed a lot of ... energy that came from the many 20-somethings whom seemed to be in crisis a LOT. She used to refer to the group as 'the meerkats'. This, of course, quickly caught on and I think she was flooded with meerkat gifts, especially around Christmas, and especially because you can find them EVERYWHERE here in London. Even I managed to score a few!