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.

Pretty ballerinas

My 'Black Jack' and 'Artist' tulips have failed to make even the most timid of appearances. After months in the soil, there is not a bit of growth to be seen. Meanwhile, my old tulips grow away, gracing me with lots of leaves...and no flowers.

But I've had two minor successes.

The first, and most prolific, is 'Spring Green' - a beautiful white and green tulip that my old supervisor, Leigh at Wild at Heart, recommended I grow. It's taken a few years, but I can finally see what he meant!

The other, moderate success is 'Ballerina'. I heard they were beautiful and scented, and the name made me think of my dancer friend, Helen. The big container looked like it had been absolutely demolished by snails a month ago, but a few Ballerinas soldiered on and graced me with this.

The scent is incredible. I think it's the strongest-smelling tulip I've grown.

My last bulb posies for this year, I think. With the last of the scented 'Geranium' narcissi.

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.

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.