Garden Tea

Here are some shots of my partner's preparation, set-up, and tablesetting for a garden tea a few summers ago.  Outdoor entertaining is always more involved than indoors because of the distance from the kitchen and having to transport everything needed for service and the table outside the house. It's even more complicated when your house sits on a slope and the yard is two floors below the ground level of the house. We found how hard it truly is to entertain outdoors when we held a 4th of July party for forty people. After a huge amount of planning and setting  it all up outdoors it was a nonstop fetch and carry all day long. People enjoyed themselves which was the point, and the talk was so nonstop, they just put used plates, cups, etc on the ground where I went discretely about retreiving them while ample trash bins were placed strategically for guests to use. We also kept cold drinks directly inside the basement with coolers and bottle openers tied down with string and I still had to offer people drinks all day long. The last guests left at 9:30 pm. It was a  gruelling day but we felt we had done our job as hosts. We made a lot of people happy. So it was worth it. Even so, we never invited such a crowd again. We prefer more intimate entertaining.
This garden tea was a party for four, the two of us and our goddaughter and her mother. We all dressed up. it was a warm July day but we all wore straw hats to keep off the sun and this nice screen for the treats.
It was a classic English tea with all the trimmings, down to those tiny ladylike tea napkins. Our godchild had a wonderful time dressing up and going through the ritual of tea. It was a memorable afternoon for all of us. I'm a lucky guy to have someone like my partner in my life.

Table set waiting for the tea

Scones, clotted cream, james, tea sandwiches under the screen on side table

Pink Fostoria Cake Plate, Red Bakelite flatware, red embroidered napkins

A candid cropped shot of handing the tea sandwiches round after the tea is served