It's starting to feel like November

I got a bit of a shock to my system on Monday when I was cutting foliage for the museum, and began to really feel the cold. It didn't help that every time I cut down branches of eucalyptus or magnolia, I got a load of cold rainwater falling on me too!

That night, I went to my first football match in a couple of years (fortunately it was an away game in glorious South East London), and tried to remind myself that it wasn't that cold; my first ever game was at the end of November in Sunderland, before Grand Central ran direct trains, and I remember the bitter cold as we waited for our connection at Newcastle. It didn't help that we lost 4-1 and Roy Keane (allegedly) resigned by text message afterwards! Also, on Monday, there was a lot of jumping up and down, which also keeps out the cold. I was very glad of the win, even if we didn't exactly play well enough to deserve it.

At the Garden Museum, I seemed to have one minor incident after another, with me managing to forget German pins, extra reel wire and extra ivy, and running out of recycled floral foam. In the end I did a foam-free arrangement for the porch with bowls and chicken wire. It's not my favourite way to do flowers, especially if it's a low arrangement, but apparently it's more eco-friendly. Here it is coming together...sorry about the light. I forgot it gets dark soon!

And finally:

And here are the reception flowers. Lovely scented narcissi and alstromeria, mixed with eucalyptus, magnolia, recycled physocarpus sticks, and a berry that I don't know the name of.

Lastly, a few of the cafe table posies.

If you are out enjoying fireworks or a bonfire tonight, stay safe, and have a good Guy Fawkes' night!

Daring to dream

I wasn't too thrilled about the football today, but hey ho. There will be wins in the future...and red and white flowers from the garden in the meantime.

Jack and Ginger

Here are some pictures of more baking things from the last few months.

These were for a Sunderland vs Man City afternoon – the red came out pink and the blue came out lilac, but you get the idea. The food itself, rosewater jam tarts, raspberry and vanilla cake, and chocolate cupcakes, all went down a treat. We won’t talk about the score though.

Some orange and poppyseed cakes, and chocolate, burnt toffee and vanilla cakes that I made for friends.

I got two baking books last year, including the latest Great British Bake Off book. Here are two cakes from it. The first is salted caramel cake, which is sickly by the time you’ve finished making it, but delicious the next day, once the caramel has left your senses. The second is a Union Jack cake – it’s just a cut and paste job, but a fiddly one. I ran out of icing sugar, so the ready-roll icing on top has unsightly seams! It was a welcome home present for my old mentor who had been travelling for a year (you can read her and her husband’s blog here – there are lovely stories about the places they saw and beautiful photos).

Here are my gingerbread houses – not nearly as pretty as the one in the book. Guess what I ran out of again?! They transported well though, as long as you have someone to drive slowly and someone to hold onto the base very carefully. And they tasted nice. The big one was for my friend who I’ve known since we worked together way back when we were doing our A-levels, and the small one was for my sister (I helped her to eat it). The leftover gingerbread dough was used to make shapes.

I went on a little break to Yorkshire and Derbyshire a few years ago, going around different towns. I had parkin for the first time, and thought I must learn how to make it. It’s the most amazing ginger cake – treacly, chewy and dense. I finally made it, and although it wasn’t nearly as nice as the parkin I had in Yorkshire, it wasn’t bad for a Southern effort.

Finally, bagels, which I am not that fussed about, but wanted to make after I saw them make them on the Bake Off. They sound like more effort than they are – making dough, quickly poaching them, and then baking them – but if you like bagels, I think they’re worth the effort. The taste and texture is less plastic-like than the ones you can buy from a supermarket. In case you wondered, they do have holes in the middle, but they shrunk in the oven!

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?