The National Herb Centre

Life is returning to normal after the much anticipated visit of our son and his wife and her parents to the UK, on their way to a holiday in Spain.

After they had flown out from Gatwick  to Madrid we still had two days of holiday left so we decided to make the most of it by travelling around the Cotswolds.

During the last day we visited the National Herb Centre which was only a couple of miles from the house we stayed in and we enjoyed scones and a pot of tea.  We’d visited twice with our visitors, on the first and last day of their stay. 

Although it was almost time for their café to close we were not hurried and we chatted with the waitress as she cleared away from our meal.  Round the walls of the café are watercolours and photographs (for sale) and we had admired the paintings since our first visit when we viewing the holiday house to see if it suited our purposes.

We told the waitress how much I had liked the painting of the periwinkles which was no longer on the wall, and wished we had bought it when we first saw it a few weeks ago. 

It turns out that she was the artist and that the painting had not been sold but taken down to make room for another of her watercolours.  She was able to fetch the painting from another part of the building and we bought it straight away.  I told her that I specially liked the painting because the same flowers were growing in my garden and that I had grown them from a cutting from my  mother’s garden many years ago – she likewise had them in her garden from her mother’s garden.  Periwinkles are very much a cottage garden plant and a favourite in such gardens.

I don’t know who was more pleased – the waitress-artist for making a sale – or us for obtaining the painting that we thought was no longer available.  It will bring back happy memories of the holiday.