Hearts and dreams

I haven't posted much lately, although I do have some flowery photos to share.

This morning I had a lovely dream about Helen. She still had cancer but she was so joyful and I talked to her after she'd been cycling in one of the royal parks in London (not something Helen did in real life). I have been thinking about her more than usual this week, so this dream was an incredible comfort to me.

I didn't share this photo here before, but I will now - it's the one Dawn Selway took as I delivered Helen's bridal flowers two and half years ago. Dawn is one quick photographer...but as I managed to hide my face in time, I guess my reflexes are pretty sharp, too!

I made a floral heart for Helen's church back in June. It was all homegrown British flowers, before the heatwave scorched half of them. There were scented roses and sweet peas, strawflowers, honeysuckle, and flowering hebe, Even though I'm not religious, I appreciate the fact that Helen was, and that her faith was personal but strong. Taking my heart to her church felt like a way to connect to her.

Today I visited Clayton at Varley and Varley's beautiful new premises in Beckenham, and I took a delivery of flowers. Scented roses with the fantastic name 'Lady Killer', red snapdragons, fluffy grasses, and some British flowers and foliage: yellow dill, pittosporum, and dark physocarpus. It wasn't intentional, but now I can see it was the sort of arrangement I would have done for Vicky - those reds and those textures.

It was nice to see the place where families and friends can come to talk to their funeral director, at a particularly difficult time of their lives. We talked for a while about our work and the people important to us. He asked me about Helen, and we remembered Vicky (it would have been her 35th birthday today). I still find it astonishing and bitterly unfair that I met Vicky on the night of the US election in 2016 and met Helen the morning after, but both of them are gone now.

Sweetness and misanthropy

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, my little sister has had a difficult year. It's horrendously tough for everyone - you have battles and tension almost every hour of every day, and a constant worry about the future.

I'm off work for a while, partly because it was getting too hard to do bereavement work when I was grieving for Helen, and partly because I need to help out more with my sister (and it's been hard to grieve because of the situation with her as well). This morning she was aggressive and anxious and her mood would change in a few seconds. But eventually she sat down and watched me while I went outside and cut a bucket of flowers. I'm growing strawflowers for the first time, which is exciting.

She let me sit near her arranging them in a couple of vases, and she even added a few cosmos herself.

Then I made a little posy and she modelled it for me before hiding away - she's more camera-shy than me. I hope the gentle, sweet scent of the roses and sweet peas is as calming for her as it is for me. I know she gets overwhelmed by noises and people because of her autism, but she does appear to be soothed by some scents. We used to go to Nymans in Sussex, and she seemed to love the rose garden there.

In other news, only one of my cornflower seeds successfully made it into a flowering plant. It's not blue, but hot pink, which I think would have pleased Vicky as much as Helen.

Thistles are growing stronger this year. There's a quiz I do every few months, and I get different results each time, even though the questions remain the same. I often get "misanthropy" as one of my qualities, and thistles symbolise this. The association between thistles and misanthropy is written about beautifully in the novel The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, which Helen bought me five years ago. I'd never heard of it, but I read it after my ex and I broke up. The ending made me cry. As Mandy Kirkby says in her reference book, also called The Language of Flowers, "to brush against [a thistle] is to risk a sharp wound, and to tread on it is a painful experience indeed...There is no doubt as to the thistle's intention: stay away from me." She goes on to describe how the thistle became an emblem for Scotland - its defiance and durability was seen as a strength.

British Flowers Week 2018: Sweet peas

British Flowers Week starts today, so I thought I'd try to post every day this week. Starting off with a small gardening victory.

I met up with Sara from My Flower Patch and her husband when they came to London for a few days back in March. It was snowing and cold so we found a nice tapas restaurant in Bloomsbury and stayed there in the warm all afternoon. She told me about the planning and organising ahead of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show - Sara is a member of Flowers From The Farm and they had their first stand at the show in May. I didn't envy her - it sounded like so much hard work. It paid off in the end as they won a gold medal!

When Sara asked me what I was growing this year, I told her I'd planned to sow sweet peas but I had left it too late. She told me a tip (which I think Gill Hodgson, who founded Flowers from the Farm, had passed on to her) which was to sow them in the small pots you get from a takeaway, on damp kitchen paper or cotton wool pads, and keep them indoors until they germinate. She said if I was lucky I would have flowers in September!

So the week after that, I washed all the pots after a Friday night thali from the local Sri Lankan grocery, I lay folded strips of kitchen paper inside each one, added a few drops of water so they were damp, and spaced out a few sweet pea seeds inside every pot. Then put the lids on and placed them on a window sill above a radiator. I checked them each day, and if they were drying up I added a few more drops of water. It was kind of like growing cress on blotting paper at school, except these were covered. And I never got excited about eating cress, whereas I do get excited about cutting sweet peas for a vase.

After a week, most of the seeds had germinated. I planted them in small, tall pots.

Fast forward three months and I have my first sweet peas flowering! The stems are a bit stumpy; unlike the amazing long stems I've grown before from winter sowings.

But they're pretty and they smell gorgeous.

The day after Helen died, I took some flowers round for her parents and nieces. I had cut some hellebores, apple mint, and bluebells from the garden and bought British sweet peas, narcissi, and tulips. I hoped the gentle scent would be comforting and not overwhelming or even irritating. Fortunately, Helen's mother said it was nice to have flowers again because they'd had to throw out the wilted ones which were given when Helen was ill.

It's hard to find the motivation to do things when you're troubled or when you're grieving. When I visited Helen's parents after the funeral, her mother told me that she didn't feel like gardening, and I could really empathise. I asked if she'd like some plants because I had too many, and she said OK. So the next time I went round, I took some sweet peas and cosmos. I went round last week and saw the sweet peas are in a beautiful homemade wigwam, and the cosmos are in the flower bed. Busy Lizzies are planted up in containers hanging from the fence, and the garden is looking lovely and loved. We talked about Helen and there's sadness and anger and confusion and guilt. But there's tenderness and tiny pieces of joy as well.

Sweet peas mean delicate pleasures in the Victorian language of flowers, but I've just seen that they also symbolise departure. This feels especially poignant this year. I also have another friend in mind - I don't want to name them in case they don't want me to, but I know they're going through a hard time now and sweet peas are special flowers for them.

For all of the healing these flowers can bring, I'm glad I managed to grow them. So thank you for the nudge, Sara.

Stay beautiful

This is one of those things where I look back at and think, "I could have done better". The fact it was for one of my favourite lecturers and from the whole year group at uni (yikes - pressure) probably adds to that. But she seemed delighted with them, which is the main thing. She has taught me over four years, and she mixes pink and red, sometimes with animal print, to gorgeous effect - hence the combination of flowers and the tiger-print wrapping (from Paperchase, if you want some for yourself).

Scented 'Kate' David Austin roses, red sweet peas, and pink clematis (which symbolises "mental beauty" in the language of flowers - buy some for yourself if you've got end of year exams or coursework!) were from Dennis Edwards at the market. Our lecturer grows clematis but had never seen it as a cut flower before, which was nice.

The rest was from the garden or foraged. Apple blossom smells incredible when first cut, but doesn't last very long, unfortunately. The sudden heatwave last week didn't help the flowers, although the sunshine was much appreciated and long overdue. Blue flowering rosemary (for remembrance) combined with the roses and sweet peas made for one sweet-smelling bouquet.

I used a Charbonnel et Walker tin - but I'd already aqua-packed the bouquet, so I can't guarantee if the tins are watertight. They are too beautiful to keep hidden in a cupboard though!

I cannot believe I spent three hours sunning myself outdoors with a friend on Sunday. I know it's not great for florists, but bring back the sunshine! (And sorry, but it's been a while since I've shamelessly used a Manics song or lyric for a title. To be fair, they do love their animal print as well.)

Back to work blues

Was today too much like hard work, with the return to work, school or college causing you to crawl out of bed at a snail's pace this morning, and long to go back to bed as soon as possible? Like a lot of people, I found the jolt back to my usual routine unwelcome and abrupt. My sister went back to her care home yesterday, and I always feel blue when she's out of London.

She's the blurry baby on the far left, and the tiny blur in a red coat on the right. It was raining on the day the gold-framed photo was taken.

Of course, it ended up raining today.

A Twitter observation on the blueness of this Monday got me to think about blue flowers. I'd already shared photos of bluebells this morning on Facebook and Twitter, as bluebells symbolise constancy (which I thought would be a comfort, given the unsettling return to work) as well as kindness and gratitude.

But more blue flowers wouldn't go amiss.

So here are some Monday blues. A lot of these are British flowers: bluebells, forget-me-nots, hyacinths, cornflowers, nigella, delphiniums, flax, lavender, muscari, sweet peas and scabious. And there are also roses, gentian, irises, and campanula. I've been a bit licentious about what counts as blue, but so are the people who name flower varieties! Blue flowers often have a fantastic scent as well, which is a lovely bonus. Happy Monday!