although I am too hot to think. Writing about no-chemical swimming pools is heating instead of cooling my brain. And I cannot remember the name of this plant.

I’m told that it seeds everywhere. I was told that about Nicotiana sylvestris and I can’t manage to get it to flower let alone seed.
Then there’s the enigma of the Monkey ‘C’.    

Lake swimming last night. Water lily flowers tight shut. Vast pike leaps out of the water lily pads beside me.

Now I will stick to admiring my own mini lilies, by day, from my pike-free garden.    

Sir Hardy Amies, the Rosa Mundi nutter, war hero and Queen’s couturier would have been 100 last Friday and, in celebration, David Freeman had a lunch at Hardy’s Gloucestershire garden where the last of the Rosa mundi are just going over. His garden looks lovelier than ever now that its corsets have been slightly loosened. And I so approve of loose corsets.    

The eagle-nosed garden god and spelling bee champion James Alexander Sinclair (pictured here swapping ears with Ann-Marie Powell) has jiggled and joggled his ASCII-to-hex chart, primped and preened his sprocket retainer bolts and come up with an even shiner website. The blog’s good, too http://www.blackpitts.co.uk/: witty, erudite, timely, apt. So maybe this is what comes of hitting the half century. Happy almost birthday for the 30th oh illustrious one.    

Teetered in from the official opening of Kim Wilkie’s new landscape ‘Orpheus’, dripping mud and rain across rolling floorboards at Boughton House, Northamptonshire. Orpheus is an elegant turf pit (above, behind Kim) representing the eponymous hero’s journey into the underworld – in landscaping terms a 21st century answer to the neighbouring eighteenth century Olympian Mount (below).

A tempest lashed around us while we inspected Kim’s elegant pit and a band of early musicians, I Fagiolini, plunged down towards Hades to play a few bars until the rain drove us all indoors.
I wonder how many times this scene has played out through the ages with seventeenth and eighteenth century guests rattling up from London for a garden party only to be rained on.

Feel that Orpheus, who sang so sweetly that he scared away the Sirens while he was being a Greek hero, should have been able to have scared away the rain. When he descended into the underworld to rescue his wife, and then bogged up the mission by breaking a promise, I wonder if it occurred to him that he would be remembered as a verdant pit – or a romping ENO operetta.

Either way the place is worth visiting. The hellish new landscape is heavenly (although I’m not convinced by the Fibonacci curve at the top of the pit pictured at the top of this page) and the surrounding old landscape is magnificent. The rest of the garden’s brimming with plant and design interest. And the house stuffed full of beautiful, ancient, unusual paintings (including an unusual one of Henry VIII and his three children); Venetian chests, gorgeous ceilings and grand/cosy four posters.

All still lived in by the man who commissioned the landscape, the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry (pictured here using the music stand as an umbrella) and his large family.
    

Lusciously lean James Alexander Sinclair has been in touch to tell me about The Guardian’s sexy gardens piece yesterday. Garden filth is a particular favourite of mine. Contact me if you’d like to come to one of the Erotic Gardens talks I’m giving, for charity, in Oxford and London.    

I’ll be talking about Erotic Gardens on Friday February 5th at Middle Temple (all proceeds to Malawi Dream, tickets from malawi_dream@me.com) and March 12 and 19 in Oxford. The Oxford gigs are also fund raisers, one for a new homeless charity working with the Burford Garden Company. Probably easiest to buy tickets from me. Watch this space for updates about the charities etc!
    

GOLD
The win, and raising awareness about problems faced by the indigenous people of the Cameroon rainforest, made the slog worth it… even working seven months without a weekend. You can read about some of it on http://bakagarden.wordpress.com/.
And as soon as I get a break from my new job, running the Financial Times’ property section, I’ll put some pix up.    

Odd things always happens after time spent at the Savoy. Once, many years ago, the concierge found me my first husband. Another time Adam Faith picked me up in the American bar on the night I launched the Daily Express’ first colour magazine. And then there was the Botham incident, again in the American bar.
Tonight I went to a small pre-opening party to have a look at the renovations which have taken nearly three years. All very lovely.
Outside, just beyond the only street in the UK where you have to drive on the right I gave a hand to a man in a wheelchair. Ten minutes later I was in at the Royal Opera House listening to an audience with Sir Jonathan Miller talking about.. opera. All thanks to my mystery new friend – don’t even know his name,
As I left, slightly early, I lost my way and landed up in the staff canteen where I found a pile of chocolate muffins. I hate the things but bought a couple for my colleague Tom Robbins, the FT’s travel editor. That was the deal – I represented him at the Savoy so long as I ‘brought back muffins from the Savoy’. Has anyone else ever seen muffins at The Savoy? Well I haven’t and even the super soaraway new Savoy had little parcels of raw tuna, tankers of champagne, teeny spring rolls etc etc but no muffins.
So the muffin issue was resolved by the Royal Opera House.
And if my mystery friend reads this: thank you so much.
    

Annie Lennox and the Home Secretary got together to big up SING, an AIDS charity http://www.annielennoxsing.com/ Listen and be moved.
Camila Batmanghelidjh said she would rather be facing a teenager with a knife than us lot after lunch. Her work with homeless, troubled teenagers is being threatened by a funding cut. This is insanity. Which billionaire with a brain will step up to this particular plate? Please? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_Company,
As always the lunch was packed with women doing boggling stuff – witness this site:
http://www.womenoftheyear.co.uk/z-yes-you-can.htm

And Shara Brice and the East End kids she turned into a troupe of world class cheer leaders…can’t wait to see the film that Hollywood is making about them.