The Walking Dead gingerbread hospital

It's been five years since my first and only attempt to make a gingerbread house. I had enough gingerbread that time to make two small houses - one for my close friend who I nearly always meet for a drink on Christmas Eve, and one for my sister.

This year a different friend had to cancel her 40th birthday party because her little boy was ill in hospital. She said she felt like Daryl from The Walking Dead when he was trapped in the Sanctuary and forced to listen to Easy Street over and over - because another family in the same ward kept playing Three Little Kittens to soothe their poorly girl.

Once her boy was feeling better and her girl was off school for the holidays (and I was on holiday from one of my jobs, working at a school), we planned to meet up for a belated birthday/early Christmas lunch. I had an idea of making a gingerbread hospital (like the one Rick wakes up in during the first episode) on the outside that is the Sanctuary on the inside.

As ever, my ideas are usually better in theory than in practice, but hey - it kind of worked and my friend seemed to get what it was. Although the figure inside which was meant to be her as Daryl needed some definition for the arms and folded legs - she thought it was a handbag. Whoops.

You might be able to spot the record player, the character Jesus (who would have had brown hair if I had brown icing), Lucille, and a random star that looks more like a spider's web.

What was impressive to me is that I managed to carry it on two crowded trains to her flat without it collapsing. Royal icing is an amazing invention! (No, I don't make my own, as my Great British Bake Off book recommended. Gingerbread buildings take long enough to make without whisking egg whites as well.)

And if you like torturing yourself, here's a 30-minute loop of Easy Street.

Birth flowers and trees in November

My birthday has come and gone this month, and one of my gifts was a handtied from an old friend. I don't think I've received anything other than petrol station flowers for my birthday before, so it was a lovely surprise. There were beautiful anemones, lemony waxflower, and a big, marshmallowey chrysanthemum bloom in the centre. Chrysanthemums are the birth flower for November and I've never been keen on them, associating them with the petrol station spray flowers that I've been given in the past, but of course there are so many types of chrysanthemums, and blooms are brilliant.

As there have been some lovely clear days in the last week, I decided to make the most of my RHS membership and visit Wisley, to see how it looks in autumn. It's beautiful!

There are autumn leaves, of course, with acers aplenty. And there are pretty berries like cotoneaster. Below are Acer palmatum 'Inaba-shidare', Acer palmatum 'Atropurpureum', and Acer palmatum 'Osakazuki'.

Everywhere you turn, there are beautiful grasses, including miscanthus and stipa. In the language of flowers, grasses are the symbol of homosexual love.

But there are flowers, too. There were stunning pink nerines in the gardens, with many more on display in the glasshouse. The glasshouse also had a display of chrysanthemums. Begone, petrol station memories!

And walking around the gardens, there were lots of Eryngium 'Silver Ghost', dancing Gaura 'Whirling Butterflies', and late roses (in order of appearance below: Lucky, You're Beautiful, and Crocus Rose).

There were other late-flowering gems to be found, such as Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm' and Achillea 'Credo', and autumn treasures like red-stemmed dogwood. Gardens don't shut up shop at the end of the summer; there is beauty to be found all year round!

Feeling blue

My sweet peas and my 'Blue Dress' linum (flax) finally flowered this week. I'm so pleased! They are so dainty and pretty.

I made a small jam jar posy with them for my ex-mentor's birthday. I added some Mayfield Lavender, 'Pink Mist' scabious, verbena, chocolate mint and blackcurrant sage. I love all this blue and purple - such wild and mysterious colours.

Sweet hearts and wishing trees

Here are some photos from my little sister’s birthday – flower arrangements and a wishing tree that I made for her (my partner did the blue leaves – my first effort looked more like a giant teardrop!) and baked treats that I spent the day before making. The flowers are guelder rose, blue hydrangea and purple limonium. The arrangements were inspired by the birthday cake my sister had for her first birthday in the 80s, with pastel fondant icing on top and hundreds and thousands around the side. The huge heads of hydrangea were the fondant icing and the fairydust-like limonium was the hundreds and thousands!

The sweet treats were heart and butterfly-shaped chocolate biscuits, Earl Grey cupcakes, and a chocolate and vanilla marble cake. I tried to tie in the colours of the flowers, so the cakes and biscuits were various combinations of purple, green, yellow, blue and white. The biscuits and big cake were painstaking to decorate, and the big cake went wrong – the royal icing was too runny! But as it was my first attempt to ice stripes down a big cake, I was pretty pleased with it. And the marble ‘worked’ when it was cut and tasted pretty good, which was a big relief! I was happy with the biscuits though. I can see why handmade iced biscuits are so expensive – it’s the time it takes to make the dough, cut them, bake and cool them,  do the outline, flood the inside with icing, then decorate. They’re fun to make but pretty fiddly, especially when you are using different colours of icing.

It was one of the few times I wished I had a dishwasher!

Glorious guelder rose

I made some arrangements for my little sister's birthday this week, using blue and green hydrangea, green guelder rose, and purple limonium. I also made her a little wishing tree. It's horribly dark and foggy today, so I'll add photos of these later in the week - hopefully the weather will brighten up and the photos won't look so gloomy!

There were some small stems of guelder rose and limonium and one stem of hydrangea left over, so I made up some jugs of flowers for the flat. I added some blackcurrent sage and pennyroyal mint from the balcony garden to the medium jug, to tie in with the red wild rose and to add a bit more interest. I like how the lime green guelder rose and the purple limonium are the same colours as the flowers on the Beverley Hewitt, small green and purple jug.

Hats off

I made a hatbox arrangement for a friend’s birthday recently. I decided to use colours I wouldn’t normally use together – deep reds and purples – but I think they worked well. I used seasonal Sweet Williams and beautiful clematis, with jasmine and William Shakespeare 2000 roses from the garden.

I made a little posy with the leftover Sweet Williams and clematis. I could imagine this being used as a little bridesmaid’s posy alongside the vibrant low tablecentres, with a bridal bouquet of huge garden roses and jasmine, and buttonholes of jasmine, clematis and Sweet Williams.

Colour me beautiful

One thing I’ve learned is that when someone tends to give you a lot of constructive feedback (aka criticism), you can be sure that any praise they give you is genuine. I made a birthday bouquet to give to a friend after college, and on seeing it, my tutor said it had a lovely colour harmony. All those hours I put into our epic colour assignment must have paid off!

This bouquet uses big, ruffled, cerise Tacazzi roses, bright coral pink Gracia spray roses, and claret astrantia. The flowers were for my friend Grace, so the Gracia roses found a good home.

I’ll be glad when the days are longer – for one thing, I won’t have so many flower photos that have to be taken in the dark!

Flowers; putting Prozac in the shade!

I had a birthday recently and got some lovely presents. This two-tier cake stand was a surprise from my friend in Jersey, who I’ve been out with for afternoon tea a few times. I love it! It didn’t take me long to test it out – cucumber sandwiches, mini scones, Welsh cakes, and birthday cake on the stand, and Ceylon tea in my Alice in Wonderland cup and saucer. I can’t wait to do a vintage wedding with flowers on cake stands and teapots – I know it’s a popular theme right now, but it’s so pretty and charming, who cares how many other people are doing the same theme?

Speaking of vintage weddings, here are a couple of table arrangements I did during my work experience. The background isn’t all that attractive (the floor of the warehouse), but I’m pretty pleased with the flowers.

I also got some lovely flower books and rose and ‘gardener’ hand cream for my birthday! Flower Shop Messages has some beautiful photos, and is full of messages which people have enclosed with the flowers they’ve sent. Some are touching, some are funny, and some are just curious. I particularly like this one: ‘Dear Granny, we’re glad to hear you are feeling better. Please don’t go up any more ladders.’ The friend who gave me the book is a dancer, and as we looked through it together while we waited in the queue for the Degas dancers exhibition, we were both amused by this message: ‘When we said ‘break a leg’, we didn’t really mean it!’ The title of this post is also a message from the book – I do agree that flowers are a wonderful mood-lifter.

And Mandy Kirkby's The Language of Flowers is a gorgeous book – I love the design of it as well as the fascinating text. It has entries on fifty flowers, from cherry blossom to wallflower. The entry for daisy starts off with this quote by John Clare: ‘Daisies, ye flowers of lowly birth/ Embroiderers of the carpet earth.’

Before I hid the books away on my shelf, I wanted to sit them next to flowers...seeing as they're all about flowers and they have such pretty covers. This is a little posy I made from worse-for-wear waxflowers and germini while I was clearing out my flower bucket at college.