Florist on tour: Part 2, My Flower Patch

The journey from York to My Flower Patch Sara's local train station in Wiltshire took six hours, but it went pretty quickly and the journey was mostly peaceful. I listened to the MiniDisc I'd compiled before I went away, forgetting how random it was (Bonnie Tyler followed by Elvis, anyone?), read my book, and fell asleep. I journalled and sketched as I waited to change trains in Reading (the York to Reading train was the slow one - it would have been quicker to go into London and then out again, but I was on a budget!).

Sara met me at the quiet train station, and we went to the local Indian restaurant to order a takeaway. There was a bit of a wait - since it was one of the few places open on a bank holiday Monday, everyone seemed to eating there - but it gave us time for a drink and catch up! We went to her house, gifts were distributed (Betty's tea for her and her husband, Sara's beautiful flowers for me), and the three of us ate dinner and chatted.

The next morning, I met their son again. He had, understandably, forgotten meeting me a few years ago in London. As I had breakfast with him while Sara got his things ready for us to go out later, he asked me if I wanted to take a photo of him to show my family. It was the sweetest question! I got my camera and returned to find Darth Vader. He asked me if I would like to have the rest of my breakfast with Darth Vader and there was only one answer to that!

We went to the flower patch with Sara and their dog, and I finally got to see the fruits of Sara's hard work! It has been lovely getting to know her through Twitter and her visits to London, but I really wanted to see her flowers in the flesh. It was a beautiful, sunny day, which made for a lovely day out, but rather overexposed photos. Here are a few pictures of the patch, but they don't do it justice - I was oohing and ahhing as soon as we walked over to it, and didn't know where to look first. At every turn there was something new, and the scent of mint as soon as we walked through the gate was amazing. I just can't imagine the amount of work that goes into creating and maintaining a flower farm like this - it's incredible.

The pollinators love her flowers, as you can see here. One minute I was trying to take a photo of a scabious, and the next minute I'd be distracted, chasing after a butterfly. I got very excited when I saw this green butterfly on a zinnia - I think it's a Brimstone. We don't see many of these in London!

There is grassy space next to the flower patch, where we played Frisbee and attempted archery. Here's an action shot of Sara channelling her inner Katniss Everdeen.

I can't explain why exactly, but strawflowers make me smile. Maybe because I've never grown them, rarely see them, and love the papery feel of them.

I adore pink scabious.

And lupins.

Astrantia are so delicate and pretty, they even look beautiful when they haven't opened up.

We went back for lunch and then for a drive to Avebury, with my hosts giving me a guided tour of Wiltshire and pointing out some of the white horses. We were able to see up close Avebury's stones that make up its stone circles. I like the one that looks like a horse.

Sara and I didn't really get the hang of hide and seek.

And did I mention the superhero who was with us? It was a scorching hot day, but Spiderman kept his outfit on, opening gates for pleasantly surprised visitors, and leading the way for us.

In the evening, Sara and I went to the flower patch, leaving Spiderman with his father. She asked me what flowers I wanted to cut for us to play with the next day, and I couldn't decide. The only thing that hurried me was the fading light, and the phone call from Sara's husband telling us it was time for tea! It was kind of like playing outdoors as a kid, when the kids on my road would have so much fun playing on our bikes or on the swings, that our parents would eventually have to come outside and call us indoors before it got too dark. There is something blissfully childlike about being in a flower field and knowing you can play with flowers. Less childlike, but much appreciated, were the gin cocktails that were waiting for us along with a delicious dinner when we got home!

In the morning, like a kid at Christmas, I went to Sara's workshop to see what was there - and saw the flowers that Sara had carefully taken back on a wheelbarrow and unloaded.

We played with flowers, grappling with the rain and a poor child who wanted us to play with him instead. I was a bit overwhelmed by the huge variety of things we'd picked, so I overthought and wasn't too pleased with my efforts. Oh well - it's good to practice for nothing in particular sometimes, and it was nice to use lime green physocarpus instead of the usual dark foliage I tend to use. Sara adores cleome, so I had to include some of hers!

Sara did a beautiful bowl arrangement using nasturtiums and berries.

She also made a gorgeous flower crown, which her son wore all the way to the train station where they saw me off. He told me to phone when I got home, so they knew I had arrived safely - more adorableness, which I could not refuse.

And I'll finish with more florist shoes. (I feel like Gretchen in Mean Girls, trying to make fetch happen.)

I can sing a rainbow

There is a TV programme tonight all about people giving up sugar. I gave up sugar (and a bunch of other things) once for a year and all I can say is: never again. Now I aim for five fruit and veg a day and fit in nice things like cake around them, no food-shaming and less body-shaming, and that seems to make me much happier than I was during the sugar-free year.

So if you are not a fan of sugar, you might want to stop reading now.

Everyone else: here is my first attempt at rainbow cake. I have wanted to make it ever since I tried the gorgeous one from Cloud 9 in Brighton a few years ago.

I made this for my friend at the weekend. The natural colours (purple and blue) came out more muted than the artificial ones, and I am too impatient to do a proper crumb coating of buttercream, wait for it to dry, and then ice properly - but apart from that, I think it worked. It was a basic 2oz of butter, sugar and self-raising flour to 1 egg, and I used 4 eggs. I added vanilla and orange blossom to the cake and the buttercream.

I'm also sharing photos of a polychromatic bouquet I made as a wedding gift for a couple last year, which I haven't got around to sharing here. It was late summer, and there was a mixture of British and imported flowers as well as stuff I'd grown. It smelled amazing.

I can sing a rainbow, too.

Sunflowers in the spotlight

Oh dear, has it really been four weeks since my last post? Sorry...I have excuses, but I won't bore you with them. I do have some new photos I want to share, and they follow on nicely from my last post about sunflowers.

Last month, two of my cousins from Canada came to London for their first visit to Europe. It was lovely to see them - the last time I saw them was several years ago when I did a two-week tour of Canada to see friends and family (and the polar bears). One of them is really into photography and wanted to take photos of London at night, so one balmy evening, we had a wonderful night out in the city. We went for dinner at Swan at Shakepeare's Globe (where she was bemused by the British thing of standing around in a pub for hours), walked along the river (where she was bemused by the British thing of standing around outside with a pint when it's warm outside), and went for cocktails/mocktails and much giggling at the OXO Tower. I don't have any decent photos, partly because I feel self-conscious taking photos in restaurants, but I did sketch our drinks the next day for #DrawingAugust.

My cousin took lots of good photographs, and I took a few dodgy ones:

I've not really taken "proper" photographs at night, except when I tried to get a decent shot of the supermoon.

I had some homegrown sunflowers and zinnias which started off like this (along with the biggest dahlias I've grown)...

...but as they died, I thought I would try to get a cinematic-looking photo of them in the dark. In Vic Brotherson's beautiful book, Vintage Flowers, she includes a photo of faded flowers that she'd forgotten about. I thought it was a lovely idea. But my dying sunflowers and zinnias would need something a bit more thoughtful than a quick camera-phone shot to look beautiful!

So I set up a camera on a tripod at night, used two different torches, and sometimes used a tissue over the torch to get a slightly less harsh spotlight. The ISO was 200 and the aperture was f/1.2, but the shutter speed varied. It was very slow though. I found it hard to focus using auto-focus, so I manually focused - but unfortunately, my eyes weren't sharp enough to notice that the sunflower on the left wasn't in focus a lot of the time. Anyhow, as a first attempt, I'm quite pleased with them. And it was fun playing about with different shadows. I like how the shadow of the sunflower on the right is so sharp and detailed compared to the blurry flowerhead.

I often forget to take photos of my new flowers, but now I can try to find beauty in my spent ones.