Playing the Asian card

Today is Thai Pongal, which I always confuse with new year because I live in Britain, but which is sort of the equivalent of a thanksgiving or Harvest Festival in the north of Sri Lanka, where my parents are from.

The celebration involves boiling rice collected from the first harvest in milk in a clay pot, allowing the milk to boil over ("pongal"). And the date varies from year to year, but it falls at the start of January ("Thai").

I am a disgrace to the Asian community, because I am rubbish at cooking rice. I often burn it, and I don't even know how that happens! So I'm using today as an excuse to share pumpkins and flowers photos instead.

Thai Pongal is also about celebrating the sun, for giving energy to the harvest. And so here's a British harvest display I did with sunflowers. And more celosia - that must be my go-to flower in autumn!

I had a Twitter conversation this morning with a few flowery people about a certain dahlia that is very popular among florists. It's this one, which I photographed when I went to Withypitts Dahlias.

If you know the flowers I tend to favour, you can see why Cafe au Lait is beautiful, but isn't my favourite dahlia. I prefer the dark drama of Thomas A. Edison below.

This was my parents' registry office wedding in the 1970s. White is associated with widows rather than brides, and so bright colours were the order of the day!

I had no idea when I decided to grow Nicotiana 'Lime Green' from Higgledy seeds some forty years later, that it was a flower that had featured in my parents' wedding. I saw the wedding photos a couple of months after I did this. It looked like a miniature version of the registrar's table flowers, and looking at the two photos made me smile.

The year in flowers

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

What's your type?

Romantic? There were so many pink, blousy roses, they were perfect for a romantic, fluffy bouquet, with white scented phlox, pink and white cleome, floaty white ammi, and fairy dust-like panicum.

Old-fashioned? Peach and pink roses, mixed with lavender, borage and orange thyme, made for a old-fashioned, scented posy.

Opposites attract? I love the combination of cerise and lime green. Nicotiana 'Lime Green' has proved to be a brilliant cut flower, and the plants do well indoors too, releasing their gorgeous scent at night. These were leftovers which were used to brighten up the bathroom - a room that I never would have considered decorating with flowers until I read Jane Packer's wonderful book, At Home with Flowers! The other flowers are Cosmos 'Sensation', Zinnia 'Purple Prince', cornflowers and sweet-smelling sweet peas.

Scatty Scarlett? The late Charlotte Coleman played Scarlett in Four Weddings and a Funeral, wearing an outfit that Gareth (Simon Callow) described as "ecclesiastical purple and the pagan orange symbolizing the mystical symbiosis in marriage between the heathen and Christian traditions." Nothing so philosophical was going on here; I just wanted to show Ben "Higgledy Garden" (who provided my borage and nicotiana seeds) that girls like purple and orange flowers too! These were verbena bonariensis and an orange zinnia.

Neighbourly? Pink, purple and blue sit next to each other on the colour wheel, and are one of my favourite colour combinations. Here are pink zinnias from the mixture of 'Early Wonder' colours, purple verbena, and blue borage.

As you've probably gathered, I don't really have a type. Although if I had to choose, I'd go for scented and old-fashioned. I like lots of different combinations of flowers - sometimes I don't know what works and what doesn't until I put them together. 

Pick flowers from the garden, or get bunches from the florist, and try putting them together in different ways. If you don't think you have a good eye for colour, this lopsided colour wheel might help. I had to create it for a floristry assignment when I did my diploma...I'm shuddering at the memory! The true colour or hue is on the outside ring, followed by the tint (hue+white), the shade (hue+black), and the tone (hue+grey).

A floral photography lesson from Amo La Fotografia

One thing I found difficult last year when I started learning how to use a photographer's camera and lenses (rather than my usual point-and-click or my mobile phone), was how to photograph white and pale flowers, especially when mixed with darker flowers. In this posy, the white roses lost their beautiful definition in my photos and just looked like big balls of white light!

So I was delighted when the lovely Kent-based photographer, Karen Louise of Amo La Fotografia, offered to give me an online lesson in photographing white flowers, along with other tips to improve flower photography indoors and outside. The ISO needs to be a low number (e.g. 100), the F-stop depends on whether you want detail in the background as well as the subject - a lower number for less detail in the background, and a faster shutter speed will result in a less exposed (light) photo. I am used to using the histogram as a guide, not the shutter speed, so this was all new to me. But...it works! It's quite hard to get out of old habits, and I can see that many of my photos could improve if I were a bit braver. As Karen Louise says in her tutorial, it's easier to 'correct' underexposed (darker) photos with an editing tool than it is to correct overexposed (lighter) photos. And incidentally, when you look at her tutorial you'll see her flower arrangements are as gorgeous as her photos!

Here are some photos I took of a couple of "all in the garden" arrangements, after reading the lesson. I'm a bit annoyed by the 'Penny Lane' dahlia sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of the big arrangement - I actually removed it at the last minute before it was delivered - but never mind. The huge heads of white phlox are what I was worried about photographing, but I love how the detail  is kept by using a faster shutter speed. The tiny white flowers of Moroccan mint (I used lavender, orange, and pineapple varieties too) also kept their detail, and the white and red flowers of the 'Hot Lips' salvia kept more detail than usual. And you can't photograph scent, unfortunately, but both arrangements were highly scented, thanks to the wonderful phlox, mints, lemon balm/Melissa, sage, nicotiana, and sweet peas.

Three thunderstorms and a heatwave

The hot weather has encouraged a lot of flowers to whoosh ahead and open quickly. But the first thunderstorm was a bit of a shock - I don't ever remember a storm being so loud and going on for such a long time. I certainly was not one of the people who went outside to catch a photo of the lightning! Despite the lashing rain and hailstones (hailstones in a heatwave - how does that work?!), my flowers survived.

There were lots of new flowers to enjoy - I started to cut the borage, and before long there was cleome, cosmos and ammi. I used some this weekend - but I'll save that for another post. I planted out some cleome and panicum - they look great together. Both are such explosive, unusual textures.

It's a much better year for my flowers than 2013, when I certainly didn't have enough for orders or gifts, except the occasional small posy. This year, when I cut from the garden, I usually fill several buckets - it's wonderful. Stems have been much longer this year too, which means I can used them for handtieds and big arrangements, not just small posies and short-stemmed funeral work. The phlox and 'Penny Lane' dahlias are a metre tall, the verbena a metre and a half, and the zinnias and cosmos are 85cm!

The spring-sown 'Polka Dot' cornflowers are quite short and soft-stemmed, but that's ok - I know to nurture my autumn-sown ones better in future! And anyway, they still look beautiful.

I've done a few handtieds similar to this one.

It uses borage, Nicotiana 'Lime Green', Panicum 'Frosted Explosion', Zinnia 'Early Wonder', Salvia 'Hot Lips', sweet peas ('Harlequin Mixed', 'Leominster Boy' and 'Dot Com'), hebe, hydrangea, verbena bonariensis, Scabious 'Pink Mist', and a 'Penny Lane' dahlia. That's one of the great things about using a garden or flower farm - you can have fewer stems each of a wider range of flowers and foliage, rather than wraps and boxes of the same species and variety.

I was asked to do casual, colourful flowers for a family gathering - so I did this grouping in Portmeirion Botanic Garden vases and bowls, a Dartington Little Gems vase, a La Mortuacienne bottle, and a tiny green bud vase. I took these photos in a hurry as I heard thunder rumbling in the distance! I quickly took everything indoors and photographed the Portmeirion pieces together.

The roses are back! I used a few to make this red, white and peach posy, and I cut a few 'Jude the Obscure' David Austin roses for their incredible scent. Mixed with flowering Moroccan mint, salvia, phlox and nicotiana, these were two sweet-smelling additions to the group.

Firework flowers

Lots of things are flowering or about to flower now - Nicotiana 'Lime Green' and borage (from Higgledy), Panicum 'Frosted Explosion' and spring-sown cornflowers (from Sarah Raven's), zinnias, jasmine, sweet peas, roses and phlox. The panicum above and below looks like fireworks or fairies, depending on whether you prefer fairytales or Guy Fawkes' Night.

Sweet peas and roses fill rooms and gardens with scent in the day, but nicotiana and jasmine release their scent at night. Early in the morning, you can smell all of them.

I caved in and cut some panicum and nicotiana, but I'm holding out a bit longer for the beautiful blue borage, phlox and Jude the Obscure roses (which I thought would never flower this year!). 

I love the lime green of the nicotiana - it's the perfect partner for bright zinnias and sweet peas.