Milkman on your doorstep

It’s a shame that as shopping habits have changed, people don’t buy milk from milkmen as much as they used to. The milkman from my childhood delivered orange juice, bread, and even potatoes!

Could you imagine a milkman delivering flowers? I saw these small milk bottles and holder in the beautiful and friendly West End florist, Vive La Rose, and I’m waiting for the right occasion to use them. I tried them out with some garden roses, jasmine and viburnum bodnantense. The dark red rose is a David Austin rose called William Shakespeare 2000 and ‘it smells to heaven’...but in a much nicer way than Claudius spoke of in Hamlet.

The gorgeous bouquets on the Vive La Rose website are inspired by and named after places such as Moray, St Ives, Maldon and Oxford. I wonder if some of my favourite British towns and cities will get their own bouquet one day – a red and white tribute to Sunderland or a coastal-themed Swansea arrangement, perhaps?