Sunday Sunshine and Garden Centres (aka. I am turning into my mother)

So last weekend was gorgeous wasn't it?  Beautiful sunshine, clear blue skies and at one point I even had sunglasses on and the car windows down - hopefully spring is now actually on it's way.

 

 

We headed out around 9am to go to a local garden centre. Yes, an actual garden centre. With plants. And sheds. And a darn good cafe on the side.
(21 year old me is laughing hysterically in the corner - or possibly crying...)

 

Whitehall Garden Centre is pretty much a giant in the local gardening scene. They have two centres, one just outside Whitchurch on the south side of Bristol and one on the Lacock bypass in Wiltshire.

Every spring, they make the very clever marketing decision to mailshot what seems like everyone in the South West with a free magazine complete with money off vouchers for various plants in the garden centre and various foodie bits in the cafe.

 

Ours arrived on Saturday morning; so along with the rest of Somerset and Wiltshire we drove across to the large centre near Lacock in the spring sunshine. The Whitchurch branch is marginally closer to us but we actually had the discussion of going to the larger branch and "making a day of it".

 

The day did start though with two bumper big breakfasts from the cafe, bought with our '2 for £9.99' voucher (usually £6.99 each so we made a saving of 4 squid). We chose to sit near the window overlooking the plants which was lovely albeit rather warm towards the end of our meal.

 

 

After stuffing ourselves we attempted to walk off the eggs and bacon by browsing the gardens. Whitehall doesn't just have plants for sale, it also has sheds, patios, greenhouses, family pets, fish, activity weekends (last week it was 'Potato Weekend'), a farm shop, gift shop, a kids adventure playground, picnic areas and plenty of colourful things to buy.

 

 

 

Andrew strayed into the sheds section and started pacing them out inside. He's got his eye on a large shed to go down the side of our house so he can have his mechanical workshop in the garage and his carpentry workshop outside. I did point out that most men would be lucky to have one very small man-cave let alone two, but needless to say that didn't go down very well...

 

After an hour of so of mooching about we picked up what we had actually come for - hanging baskets usually priced £16.99 reduced to £7.99 with a money off coupon. We usually buy a couple of nice ones for the front of the house and then I make up some of our own for the back garden (mainly because the ones I make never last as long as the garden centre ones!).

 

I tried to make Andrew hang about long enough to let our breakfast settle so we could nip back for some elevenses involving the amazing cakes on display but we didn't have time - it'll just have to be another trip on another day!

 

Have you done anything recently that's made you feel middle-aged?

Or perhaps you've already realised you're turning into your mother?