Review of the year: Winter 2016

Only a few weeks to go before the days start getting longer again. I can't wait - apart from Christmas, I'm not a fan of dark mornings and evenings.

Winter flowers included 28 candelabras for an event at Middle Temple Hall celebrating Shakespeare (which chimed in nicely with the #floristfilms hashtag: 28 Candelabras Later). It's where the first recorded performance of Twelfth Night took place in 1602, so it was a real privilege to do the flowers for this event. The flowers were not so much flowers, as trailing ivy, which hopefully created an ethereal, Midsummer Night's Dream feel to the hall.

There were scented arrangements of pine, spruce (aka blue pine), eucalyptus, stocks, and lavender, along with pussy willow, alstromeria, silver brunia, silver kochia, and white hypericum for Neal's Yard Remedies in Sevenoaks.

The scent of the foliage, herbs, and flowers nicely complimented the Christmassy smells of cinnamon, clove and mandarin that filled the shop. Pussy willow has an irresistible, tactile quality, and it lasts for weeks and weeks, which is wonderful for a shop display.

Oh, and there was white, glittery skimmia. The glitter was barely noticeable in the arrangements, but it was all over my workspace and buckets and took weeks to finally clear!

There were satsumas for Father Christmas.

And on Boxing Day, after eating leftover Quorn roast (I used Nigella's ginger-glazed ham recipe), I used my leftover flowers to try to create some modern ikebana arrangements. Ikebana is not the most obvious style for Christmas flowers, but one of my lovely Canadian cousins sent me Keiko's Ikebana book to challenge my Western-wild floristry style, and I thought I'd give it a go. I failed my natural line arrangement practical at college, along with the rest of my class - this Japanese style of floristry did not come naturally to any of us (we scraped passes on our resits though!). A lovely tutor from my diploma course, Neil Bain, encouraged me to share my efforts on Twitter - and his generous response to my photos was reassuring.

The bowl arrangement is not-quite moribana (which means "piled on") and the vase arrangement is not-quite nageire (which means "thrown in"). It looks deceptively simple in the book, but it is such a challenge if it's not your natural style. But hey - it's good to be challenged sometimes.

Now there's just over a month until Easter, I can think about clearing out my Easter leftovers with some spring ikebana.

I'll finish with some gratuitous Christmas baking photos...even though it's completely the wrong weather and time of year for eggnog cupcakes and mince pies! It was the first time I'd made eggnog from scratch, and like many homemade things, it was time-consuming but worth the effort. You also get to drink the leftover eggnog, which is a nice bonus.

The storm before the calm

The year whizzes by, the month zips along, and now it is less than a week until Christmas Day. I usually end up blogging more at Christmas during the calm after the storm...that week between Christmas and New Year is a time of reflection for me.

I went to a Christmas service at the end of November - which feels like ages ago now. It was a remembrance service for people who were bereaved, and it was intended to be a candlelit service held outside, by a Christmas tree. Unfortunately, the gale-force winds meant that the candles wouldn't light, so people took the candles with them to light quietly in their homes. It's the only service I've been to where we sang Once in Royal David's City and You'll Never Walk Alone, but it was lovely. In fact, I'd never sung You'll Never Walk Alone before, and I didn't realise what a moving song it is.

Now the weather has shifted again, and walking back past the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree last night, I realised it was 9pm on the week before Christmas, and I wasn't wearing a scarf or gloves because it was so mild.

I hope your Decembers are going well, and if it's stormy for you now, that there is calm ahead.

Almost Wordless Wednesday: Losing my voice.

As you can see, I have lost my blogging voice. Or mislaid it. Until I find it again, I am going to follow Deb's Dust Bunny's wonderful example and do some "wordless Wednesday" posts each week. Obviously, in future I won't need to write this explanation!

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus! Daffodils at the Garden Museum.

Or Happy St Davids Day, if you prefer!

I did flowers for an event at the Garden Museum this week, and used lots of bright British daffodils and scented narcissi, combined with lovely yellow forsythia, pretty green guelder rose (Viburnum opulus), dramatic purple monkshood (Aconitum), purple limonium, blue hyacinths and British yellow tulips. I used British eucalyptus and viburnum tinus, and the gardeners at the museum gave me a big pile of foliage which would have gone to the compost heap had they not seen me on the hunt for extra foliage! They told me the name of it, and I've forgotten - Lavatera (tree mallow) maybe?

Spot the shy narcissus.

I remember monkshood from my flower identification exams at college - we had to learn which flowers and plants were poisonous or skin irritants. I wore gloves to handle the flowers, as I do with euphorbia (beautiful flowers, but horrible, irritating sap).

There were daffodils, limonium and guelder rose to brighten the cafe tables.

I think spring flowers suit this beautiful old church perfectly!

You can just about make out the model of the museum here - it will be closed at the end of the year to allow time for a major reworking, which will hopefully make it an ever better place to visit.

I had to return the gorgeous pedestal afterwards to my friend who had kindly lent it to me, but the flowers sat nicely on the floor of the museum.

Declarations of love

Valentine's Day has come and gone. There were flowers for eros, storge, agape, and philia, as well as healthy narcissism. There were British tulips, narcissi, hellebores, blossom, and foliage.

Eros (Romantic love)

Red tulips for passionate declarations of love, white iris ("I have a message for you"), white hyacinths for beauty, pink ranunculus ("You are full of charms"), quince blossom for temptation, ivy for fidelity and marriage, and genista for humility.

Agape/Philia/Storge (Platonic love)

Pink tulips for graceful love, white ranunculus ("You are radiant with charms"), freesias for lasting friendship, genista for humility, pink hellebores ("Relieve my anxiety"), and mimosa for sensitivity and sensibility.

Narcissism (Healthy self love)

Paperwhite narcissi for regard, self love and new beginnings, white ranunculus ("You are radiant with charms"), mimosa  for sensitivity and sensibility, and eucalyptus for protection.

I was pleased to have flowers for the Portmeirion Botanic Blue jug I got at Christmas...even if the flowers had to be whipped out of the jug soon after the photo!