Hearts and dreams

I haven't posted much lately, although I do have some flowery photos to share.

This morning I had a lovely dream about Helen. She still had cancer but she was so joyful and I talked to her after she'd been cycling in one of the royal parks in London (not something Helen did in real life). I have been thinking about her more than usual this week, so this dream was an incredible comfort to me.

I didn't share this photo here before, but I will now - it's the one Dawn Selway took as I delivered Helen's bridal flowers two and half years ago. Dawn is one quick photographer...but as I managed to hide my face in time, I guess my reflexes are pretty sharp, too!

I made a floral heart for Helen's church back in June. It was all homegrown British flowers, before the heatwave scorched half of them. There were scented roses and sweet peas, strawflowers, honeysuckle, and flowering hebe, Even though I'm not religious, I appreciate the fact that Helen was, and that her faith was personal but strong. Taking my heart to her church felt like a way to connect to her.

Today I visited Clayton at Varley and Varley's beautiful new premises in Beckenham, and I took a delivery of flowers. Scented roses with the fantastic name 'Lady Killer', red snapdragons, fluffy grasses, and some British flowers and foliage: yellow dill, pittosporum, and dark physocarpus. It wasn't intentional, but now I can see it was the sort of arrangement I would have done for Vicky - those reds and those textures.

It was nice to see the place where families and friends can come to talk to their funeral director, at a particularly difficult time of their lives. We talked for a while about our work and the people important to us. He asked me about Helen, and we remembered Vicky (it would have been her 35th birthday today). I still find it astonishing and bitterly unfair that I met Vicky on the night of the US election in 2016 and met Helen the morning after, but both of them are gone now.

Sweetness and misanthropy

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, my little sister has had a difficult year. It's horrendously tough for everyone - you have battles and tension almost every hour of every day, and a constant worry about the future.

I'm off work for a while, partly because it was getting too hard to do bereavement work when I was grieving for Helen, and partly because I need to help out more with my sister (and it's been hard to grieve because of the situation with her as well). This morning she was aggressive and anxious and her mood would change in a few seconds. But eventually she sat down and watched me while I went outside and cut a bucket of flowers. I'm growing strawflowers for the first time, which is exciting.

She let me sit near her arranging them in a couple of vases, and she even added a few cosmos herself.

Then I made a little posy and she modelled it for me before hiding away - she's more camera-shy than me. I hope the gentle, sweet scent of the roses and sweet peas is as calming for her as it is for me. I know she gets overwhelmed by noises and people because of her autism, but she does appear to be soothed by some scents. We used to go to Nymans in Sussex, and she seemed to love the rose garden there.

In other news, only one of my cornflower seeds successfully made it into a flowering plant. It's not blue, but hot pink, which I think would have pleased Vicky as much as Helen.

Thistles are growing stronger this year. There's a quiz I do every few months, and I get different results each time, even though the questions remain the same. I often get "misanthropy" as one of my qualities, and thistles symbolise this. The association between thistles and misanthropy is written about beautifully in the novel The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, which Helen bought me five years ago. I'd never heard of it, but I read it after my ex and I broke up. The ending made me cry. As Mandy Kirkby says in her reference book, also called The Language of Flowers, "to brush against [a thistle] is to risk a sharp wound, and to tread on it is a painful experience indeed...There is no doubt as to the thistle's intention: stay away from me." She goes on to describe how the thistle became an emblem for Scotland - its defiance and durability was seen as a strength.

British Flowers Week 2018: Canterbury bells

After a couple of years of nurturing and patience, my Canterbury bells, which I grew from Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants seeds, flowered this year.

I used campanula for Mother's Day a few years ago - you can read about their symbolism here, and why they are a lovely flower to give to someone.

And here they are now with scented roses and pink escallonia from the garden.

British Flowers Week 2018: Not quite orange blossom

Today's post is about philadelpus, also known as mock orange because it has an incredible scent like orange blossom. It grows tall and it looks beautiful against a clear blue sky. It also looks gorgeous massed together in an arrangement.

It looks beautiful on its own or mixed with a couple of other colours. In the picture below it's with physocarpus.

Close up:

Here it is with delicate nigella (which I no longer have this year after a fox or two jumped all over them...I was not impressed!):

I wanted to use a Snapple bottle because of the Clueless line: "I gave him my lemon Snapple and I took his sucky Italian roast." The character Cher uses her unwanted thermos of coffee to try to set up two teachers on a coffee date.

This was for British Flowers Week a few years ago - with white alliums, jasmine, and ammi. The beautiful jar is orange blossom honey from Tiptree. And the lovely scent of mock orange and jasmine overpowers the not-so-nice scent of alliums!

British Flowers Week 2018: Sweet peas

British Flowers Week starts today, so I thought I'd try to post every day this week. Starting off with a small gardening victory.

I met up with Sara from My Flower Patch and her husband when they came to London for a few days back in March. It was snowing and cold so we found a nice tapas restaurant in Bloomsbury and stayed there in the warm all afternoon. She told me about the planning and organising ahead of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show - Sara is a member of Flowers From The Farm and they had their first stand at the show in May. I didn't envy her - it sounded like so much hard work. It paid off in the end as they won a gold medal!

When Sara asked me what I was growing this year, I told her I'd planned to sow sweet peas but I had left it too late. She told me a tip (which I think Gill Hodgson, who founded Flowers from the Farm, had passed on to her) which was to sow them in the small pots you get from a takeaway, on damp kitchen paper or cotton wool pads, and keep them indoors until they germinate. She said if I was lucky I would have flowers in September!

So the week after that, I washed all the pots after a Friday night thali from the local Sri Lankan grocery, I lay folded strips of kitchen paper inside each one, added a few drops of water so they were damp, and spaced out a few sweet pea seeds inside every pot. Then put the lids on and placed them on a window sill above a radiator. I checked them each day, and if they were drying up I added a few more drops of water. It was kind of like growing cress on blotting paper at school, except these were covered. And I never got excited about eating cress, whereas I do get excited about cutting sweet peas for a vase.

After a week, most of the seeds had germinated. I planted them in small, tall pots.

Fast forward three months and I have my first sweet peas flowering! The stems are a bit stumpy; unlike the amazing long stems I've grown before from winter sowings.

But they're pretty and they smell gorgeous.

The day after Helen died, I took some flowers round for her parents and nieces. I had cut some hellebores, apple mint, and bluebells from the garden and bought British sweet peas, narcissi, and tulips. I hoped the gentle scent would be comforting and not overwhelming or even irritating. Fortunately, Helen's mother said it was nice to have flowers again because they'd had to throw out the wilted ones which were given when Helen was ill.

It's hard to find the motivation to do things when you're troubled or when you're grieving. When I visited Helen's parents after the funeral, her mother told me that she didn't feel like gardening, and I could really empathise. I asked if she'd like some plants because I had too many, and she said OK. So the next time I went round, I took some sweet peas and cosmos. I went round last week and saw the sweet peas are in a beautiful homemade wigwam, and the cosmos are in the flower bed. Busy Lizzies are planted up in containers hanging from the fence, and the garden is looking lovely and loved. We talked about Helen and there's sadness and anger and confusion and guilt. But there's tenderness and tiny pieces of joy as well.

Sweet peas mean delicate pleasures in the Victorian language of flowers, but I've just seen that they also symbolise departure. This feels especially poignant this year. I also have another friend in mind - I don't want to name them in case they don't want me to, but I know they're going through a hard time now and sweet peas are special flowers for them.

For all of the healing these flowers can bring, I'm glad I managed to grow them. So thank you for the nudge, Sara.

Comfort in decay

I'm sorry. But shouldn't you send bouquets to people who've got something to celebrate like, you know, an anniversary or a new job or something? Not losing a bloody baby. I mean, what do flowers do anyway? Nothing. You know, they just sit there, reminding you of why they were sent to you, and then they die. Well I've got that to look forward to, haven't I?

Jenny, Cold Feet

This episode of Cold Feet where Jenny and Pete receive a barrage of bouquets after their miscarriage is one I use to illustrate why sympathy flowers are problematic. Cut flowers aren't plants, and they have a limited life.

I've heard stories of people who've taken immense comfort in the sympathy flowers that were given to them, and even some who took the funeral flowers back home. But I've also witnessed people's anger as they recounted people giving flowers when the person who died couldn't stand them, or distress as their home started to feel like a hospital room with bouquets and baskets everywhere, or the stress of running out of vases. (I recommend only sending sympathy flowers in a container that can be displayed.)

After Helen's funeral, most of the leftover flowers went to her family and friends. I had a few White O'Hara roses, feverfew, rosemary and Solomon's Seal. I put them in the blue Portmerion vase that Helen had seen displaying narcissi and delphiniums when she told me she was engaged.

I took great comfort in the scent of the roses. I would lean towards them and inhale deeply, as if they were an oxygen mask. A few years ago, my therapist friend Lisa Hardi recommended rose oil to me as it's nurturing and a heart-healer, and it is one of my favourite smells. It probably reminds me of carefree summers and the old roses in my childhood garden. The scent is so warming, sweet, and comforting.

However, there was a gradual change over the next week. The sweet scent that filled the room became more sour. The roses were decaying, and the hot weather was intensifying this. Cut flowers expend a lot of energy trying to stay alive, and scented flowers require more energy and consequently have a shorter life. But I took comfort from them, these physical reminders of that heartbreaking day. I should have thrown the roses out and just kept the daisy-like feverfew, but I didn't want to. I wanted to keep the roses as long as possible, and I don't know how to explain why, but I felt secure when I smelled the decaying flowers each morning. The only comparison I can make is with The Bell Jar, when Esther wears the same borrowed blouse and skirt for weeks and describes the unwashed smell as "sour but friendly". (I'm not in Esther-ville though, don't worry.)

One day I'd been weeding in the afternoon heat, and as I sat indoors resting afterwards, I wondered what the terrible smell was. I thought it was my clothes after kneeling on the ground and handling earth and weeds. Then I realised it was the flowers, and it was definitely time to say goodbye to them.

I took photos of them before I threw them with the garden waste. I tried to get a dusky effect in the evening light with a few photos, but I didn't really know what I was doing.

Last year, I took photos of gently wilting White O'Hara roses with ballet pinks and shared them with Helen - I didn't associate her with pink, but always associated her with ballet. And ballet with her.