Review of the year: Winter/Spring 2016

Happy new year! 

I put my back out yesterday, which wasn't the best start to 2017. And my depression has taken it out of me lately. But my back's on the mend, and hopefully my mood will lift as the days get longer. Today I was looking through this Liz and Claire Cowling book for inspiration, and their beautiful words and pictures gave me the gentle kick I needed.

So here is the first part of a quick photo review of the year. No politics and no misery here; just beauty and hope. Here's wishing you and your loved ones lots of good health, peace and joy this year.

Valentine's Day 2016

I've not felt like blogging lately, but I had better share photos of this year's Valentine's flowers before the next big floristry date (Sunday) comes around!

I used British tulips from Smith and Munson. I am sure I have used them before, but just unwittingly. They supply to New Covent Garden Market and my local wholesaler, C. J. Love. I also used pink genista, British 'Erlicheer' narcissi, and my viburnum, 'Penny's Pink' hellebores, and 'Gypsy Queen' hyacinths which made an early appearance thanks to the mild winter. The scent of the hyacinths, narcissi and genista was amazing.

 I love using polynet for wrapping bouquets. There's something a bit bridal veil about flowers peeping through the gaps.

I had leftover tulips and genista trimmings as a V Day present for myself!

January joy

It's the last day of January, which means there are just over five months until my university research project is due in. I remember thinking we had almost a year...but now I am regretting my complacent start to the project last autumn! In happier time-travelling news, it is less than two months until British Summer Time. The days are already feeling a teeny bit longer, which is helping me to feel sunnier, even though I hate the cloudy, grey days we keep having.

I saw the film Joy on New Year's Day, and it was a great film to start the year - Jennifer Lawrence is brilliantly understated and made me feel optimistic and enthusiastic about new beginnings and second chances. Even though film awards are a load of nonsense (I've never felt inclined to watch Paul Haggis's Crash after seeing it at the cinema, but I have watched Brokeback Mountain several times since I saw it at the Odeon Panton Street), I'm afraid I get totally swept up in the hype, and end up disappointed every year! I would love Inside Out to win Best Original Screenplay, but I'm sure it won't. I would rather Jennifer Lawrence be nominated for her incredible acting in the last Hunger Games film than Joy, but I think awarding bodies are too snobby sometimes. I do hope Brie Larson wins Best Acting awards for her role in Room, though - she also played a character called Joy, and the film, despite the traumatic subject matter, was beautiful and sensitive and hopeful. There was a lovely atmosphere amongst the audience in Greenwich when I watched it. We cried, we laughed, we held our breath, we sighed with relief, and we cried some more.

I bought a bunch of Lincolnshire daffodils from the garden centre after shopping for late summer bulbs. The flowers were not quite "Garden Fresh", but they were close enough! I've loved daffodils ever since my ex (Welsh) boyfriend bought me some for St David's Day - the first flowers a boy bought me. The ones I bought this week had a faint scent that was more noticeable when you first stepped in the room.

Happy 2016!

It's gloomy outside, but I'm starting the year as I mean to continue, by being a (mostly) nice big sister, sharing floral love, writing, and seeing a film with a friend this evening.

Here is rosemary that was flowering on Christmas Day and forget-me-nots from last spring, for remembering loved ones and happy times. And last year's scented narcissi for new beginnings.

Here's hoping our 2016 is a year full of peace, happiness, and love.

Christmas daffodils at the Olympic Park, Stratford

When I heard that there were confused daffodils at the Olympic Park, who had taken the cold spell earlier in the autumn to be winter and the warm November to be spring, I really wanted to see them. I kept meaning to go to the Olympic Park whenever I see photos of the beautiful summer flowers there, but I never went. Well, this time I made the effort, and got there just before the sun went down yesterday afternoon.

I couldn't see them for a while and then suddenly there was the surreal sight of a huge Christmas tree and a mass of Eastery daffodils.

I wonder how long it took to decorate this huge tree - it was full of baubles, cinnamon, oranges and lotus heads.

For all of the wrongness of having daffodils before Christmas, they were still beautiful.

I've got into a DIY nail art habit since the summer, which is spectacularly silly when I am working with my hands so much, but pfft. Here's me showing off my Christmas tree nail art.

Some of the daffodils had already started to wilt!

The sculpture by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond, the helter skelter-esque ArcelorMittal Orbit, looks wonderful up close - much better than it looked to me when I just saw it on TV or in the papers during the Olympics! And it sounds like they ARE going to open up a helter skelter slide next year...which, judging by the popularity of the slides in Tate Modern a few years ago, will be a hit.

I managed to go in before they shut and took some nice twilight photos...but most of those will have to wait for now.

I was pleased to hear they offer free access to accompanying carers of disabled people, so if my sister is ever in a good enough mood to go on the train and Jubilee Line/DLR, I would love to take her.

Last of the spring blue, white and yellow

I cut the last of the narcissi whose flowering times overlapped, so I could make a nice mixed posy. The 'Geranium' narcissi smell incredible, and a couple that I cut for a bottle lasted a good week, and the scent filled the room. They have pretty orange cups and beautiful white petals. There were also white 'Cheerfulness' narcissi from last year, which have flowered much better this year. And bright yellow 'Double Smiles' (can you spot a theme here?!). There's one 'White Lion' narcissus here too.

I found some forget-me-nots growing in the cracks of the pavement. There were only a few, so I cut some of them and put them in a tiny vase. I meant to take a picture of them by my little finger so you could see how the flowers are smaller than my small fingernail. A flower for fairies, if I ever I saw one!

Double smiles and sisterly love

My narcissi have been late to flower. I see other people's have finished but some of mine have yet to bud. The warm weather last week gave them a bit of an adrenaline shot!

I had bright yellow 'Double Smiles', cream and orange 'Broadway Star' and cream and yellow 'White Lion' narcissi last week. The bulbs were from Peter Nyssen, as were the first of my tulips - pink 'Design Impression'.

There are a few 'Cheerfulness' and 'Yellow Cheerfulness' narcissi and miscellaneous daffodils scattered around the garden, which are also peeking up now.

I did a few posies with all homegrown flowers, which is lovely, and so appreciated by the recipients.

Especially when they do that automatic thing people do when given flowers - lift them up to smell them - and the narcissi and muscari are actually scented!

I had an order for blue, white and green flowers for a special birthday dinner.

I was given a vase to use for them - it was an old vase that had been restored with a lick of paint. It was a big birthday and the dinner was for three sisters, so special flowers were called for. Delphiniums are one of the biggest, special blue flowers you can get, so I mixed them up with some green celosia, and a few flowers from the garden - white blossoms and blue flowering rosemary.

My own sister has been in a really bad over the last week, and will be going to hospital this week, so I gave her a broken-off delphinium flower to wear as a buttonhole. It means "lightness" in the language of flowers, and she could do with that in the next few days.