An Easter taster

I had the privilege of doing flowers for a gorgeous Easter wedding yesterday. The bride is a friend who I met 21 years ago in our Sunday job at Boots. There are hundreds of photos of pre-wedding prep and set up to sort through, but here are a few for now.

Easter reminder

Hope you're having a good Easter! Please don't forget to eat.

A Good Friday tradition: The Widow's Son

Nine years ago, I heard about a pub in the East End that kept a wonderful tradition every Good Friday. A hot cross bun would be added to a collection of hot cross buns that had grown each year. This tradition started after a woman, whose son had left home to be a sailor, baked a hot cross bun in preparation for his return. He never returned home, but she never lost hope, and continued to bake a bun for him each year.

So my friends and their six-month-old baby went to The Widow's Son in Bromley-by-Bow, and sat in the beer garden on a Good Friday as beautiful and sunny as today's. When it was time for a sailor to add a new bun to the net of old buns (most of which, heartbreakingly, had been destroyed in a fire), we went over but found it hard to get decent photos, being so far back. So here's one, which I took before we left. And the sign outside the pub.

There's a lovely post here, with some much better photos - the blogger spoke to some of the people who have been involved in the tradition.

As for me, I just love the continuing bond of the mother and her son, which is still being honoured now, long after both have died. I think it's beautiful testament to the strength of love, and the need to express sadness and hope and all of the other feelings that come up weeks, months, years, decades after a bereavement.

Looking at the photos now reminds me of a couple of things I saw in Liverpool last October: an exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool on women and poppies, which included a talk about white poppies. These were originally worn by women whose sons had died in the war. However, they were criticised for wearing white poppies instead of red, even though they were expressing their own, very personal loss.

It also made me think of Tracey Emin's neon artwork which hangs in the gothic cathedral on Liverpool's Hope Street. I first saw it there when I visited Liverpool in 2010, and I was relieved to see it was still there last year. It could be read in so many different ways, and I think that's one of the loveliest things about art: that very personal, emotional connection we might have with some pieces.

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.

From the archive: The Faberge Big Egg Hunt

In 2012, there was an egg hunt in London. 209 giant eggs had been designed and decorated by different artists, and were auctioned off for charity. They were spread out over London, and they really were spread out - everywhere from Canary Wharf to Kensington to Hyde Park. Ok, they were spread out over the more monied parts of London! The first Faberge Big Egg Hunt broke the world record for the Easter egg hunt with the most participants - more than 12 000.

I saw several of them when I was doing flower deliveries at the time, and made lots of mental notes to go back (on foot!) with a camera. I especially remember this striking egg cup design outside The Dorchester hotel. I would sit in the van just gazing at it as we went past. When I went back to photograph it, there was a family having their photo taken outside the hotel, which I thought was sweet.

I went to Canary Wharf one day...

...and the rest of London on days when I'd been delivering, after I finished work. I must have walked for miles and miles, but I still only found about 80 of the eggs. These are some of my favourites. I love the postbox one!

And here are some of the others - I'd love to share all of the egg photos, but there are way too many! This was in the window of the National Geographic shop - I'd forgotten, but then I noticed Harrods in the reflection. You may remember that I adore polar bears.

The egg at the top of this post was in the window of Peter Jones, where I once worked many years ago. Here are more around Sloane Square.

And more around other parts of London. Some of you can probably tell where some of these were.

Carnaby Street had several, but you had to look up sometimes.

There was the occasional disappointment. This missing egg was called Rose as well!

One of the lovely things about this egg hunt is that it got me to walk around London and see things I hadn't before. Such as this monument "in memory of the five million volunteers from the Indian sub-continent, Africa and the Caribbean who fought with Britain in the two world wars".

And the eggs in St James's Park led to a lovely walk around the park.

At the end of Easter, all of the eggs were transported back to Covent Garden to be displayed together, and I got to see some of the ones I'd missed. Another post is needed for those - there are too many photos here already!

Hot cross buns and Easter egg trails

Happy Easter! I hope you are enjoying a long weekend and a bit of a rest today.

This week started off quite well. I had an unexpectedly free day (when I thought I would be finishing my research proposal, which I had somehow sent in a day early), so I decided to bake. I was in a baking mood after making Debs Dust Bunny's crumb cake muffins a few weeks before - I was halfway through an essay and wanted a break and a snack. I made these in 45 minutes!

So this week, I baked some fancy-pants Earl Grey and orange hot cross buns to take to my friend's in the evening. They looked nice and they smelt amazing while they were baking...but they tasted a bit meh. Maybe I needed to steep the tea for longer and use more orange zest. Also, I am really rubbish at any kind of proper bread dough - I don't have the patience to knead thoroughly for five minutes, let alone ten.

As it happens, my friend had also planned to have hot cross buns, and had bought some from the supermarket and from Konditor and Cook. I was bunned out by the time I left! I picked a primrose from his garden when I left - it had such a delicate scent.

My friend gave me some lemon chiffon cake in lieu of an egg, which was much appreciated later in the week. Coincidentally, I noticed a Twitter friend had just been to a Konditor and Cook piping class. Becs (who I met at the Depressed Cake Shop in Bromley) came away from her class with a Curly Wurly cake and two trays of brownies!

For years, I have wanted to take my autistic sister on an Easter egg hunt. She has never been on one, and there is not much that she is enthusiastic about, but chocolate is one thing. She was in a good mood on Good Friday, so we went to the Red House in Bexleyheath, which was doing the National Trust egg trail. The house is gorgeous - it was created by and for William Morris, in collaboration with his architect friend, Philip Webb. Fortunately, the grounds aren't too big - I think my sister would have been impatient otherwise! We went around with our piece of paper and I asked her to stamp the paper every time we came across a stamper along the way. She got a bit fed up of doing it towards the end, so I finished it for her. After a tea break in the cafe, we went back to the start of the trail and I asked her to give in her completed trail. The lovely ladies there (I don't know if they were staff or volunteers, but they were so friendly and a real credit to Red House) went to get her prize and one of them said, "Have we got a blue one?" because my sister was wearing a blue jacket. My sister doesn't often look pleasantly shocked, but she was upon receiving her egg! She obviously thought that the trail was just me trying to get her to do something educational/nature-based.

The next day, we went to Hall Place to do their trail. Theirs was much more spread out - I saw a few little kids crying because they'd gone around once and hadn't found all of the letters (which spelled out a phrase)! My sister also got fed up halfway through, and so I had to run around in the drizzle and finish it off for her so she could get her prize.

I took a few moments to appreciate the spring beauty in the gardens - lots of pretty heather, magnolia, and the start of apple blossom.

 There were also strong-scented hyacinths and narcissi, and cowslips in the open and nestled amongst the hyacinths.

And here are some Easter leftovers: too short stems of forsythia, scented 'Double Smiles' narcissi and 'Atlantic' muscari, all from the garden or greenhouse.

I love how the forsythia and narcissi are the same vibrant yellow! Perfect partners for Easter.