Lonely Bouquet Day 2015

The last Sunday in June is Lonely Bouquet Day, when we are encouraged to make posies of flowers from our gardens (or a kind neighbour's) and leave them in a recycled container for a stranger to enjoy.

I had left this posy at a train station during British Flowers Week.

But on Lonely Bouquet Day, I was looking after my disabled sister, and while I had buckets of flowers cut and ready for us to make posies together, she really wasn't in the mood. 

So when she suddenly decided she wanted to go out, I hastily made this one and she left it by the cut flower plot at Hall Place.

I have since seen that it was adopted!

Then the rain poured down, and in the afternoon, during a brief dry hour, I made and left a few more - by the allotments near Sundridge Park, and on the bench overlooking the Desmond Tutu Peace Gardens in Chinbrook Meadows, which were designed by Chris Beardshaw (and which were the site of my first abandoned bouquet a few years ago).

Unfortunately the rush meant no fancy photos; just hasty phone ones!

British Flowers Week: A British flowers tea party

It was wonderful to fill up five buckets with flowers I've grown. Pink alliums, cornflower-blue cornflowers, strongly-scented roses...summer is well and truly here. I had to get the sprinkler out as the grass and shrubs were so parched - we've had a bit of drizzle the last few days, but it's so warm, it barely waters the plants before it evaporates.

I was so pleased to include my Bowl of Beauty peonies - they aren't scented, but they are showstoppers! This was the first one to open - if you are cutting yours, cut them just before they get to this stage.

The sixth bucket was filled with claret astrantia, drooping purple alliums, and blue-purple penstemon from Zest and white peonies from Pratley at New Covent Garden Market. You could tell it was British Flowers Week and wedding season, as the market was really buzzy when I went on Thursday, even though I went quite late (8am).

It was lovely to see a sea of Rosebie Morton British-grown roses at Zest.

I had a few flowers to do for a house party and so many left over, I was able to take some to a friend who I haven't seen for a year, and leave a couple of lonely bouquets on trains and train stations.

It was a great excuse to use a tea set (more on that on Alice Day, on the 4th of July) and to get a piece of rainbow cake from Cloud 9 in Brighton!

The philadelphus is looking gorgeous, and when I opened the door in the morning, I was hit with the smell of orange blossom (hence its common name, mock orange). So this Tiptree jar was perfect for a white posy of philadelphus, ammi, hesperis and alliums.

I have some Apollo irises that are a sunny yellow colour, and some orange and cream osteospermum. Not quite apricot, but this jar would have to do - and the peachy rose sat in one of many jars that I collect from people when they go out for scones!

The next date in your diary: Lonely Bouquet Day this Sunday, and an excuse to carry on using homegrown flowers!

British Flowers Week: Eggcups, the new jam jars

It's British Flowers Week again, and my summer flowers are filling my corner of South East London with colour, scent and texture.

Last week I filled three vases (and four eggcups) with them - from scented Harlequin sweet peas that I managed to grow from seed I saved last autumn to self-seeded and deliberately grown nigella, from pretty white alliums that were an experiment in planting unused onions to huge 'Galahad' delphiniums grown from seed, and from French lavender (bought in Mayfield Lavender) to British-grown French marigolds.

I love China blue and white, and so I used this Portmeirion vase and mixed a few blue nigella and flowering physocarpus with the white alliums, delphiniums, ammi majus, and hesperis.

This vase and matching eggcups are so cute - I thought the bright colours of the calendula, cornflowers and osteospermum would suit them. I don't think I'll tire of jam jar posies in a hurry, but eggcup flowers are a wonderful, miniature alternative.

And this lime green glass vase was made for summer flowers. There are plenty more to come. In the meantime, you can read more about British Flowers Week here.

Hello Goodbye

...said the Beatles. I have lots to share here, but no time as I'm off to see the Manics play their best album in Cardiff and to the Thomas Hardy 175th anniversary celebrations.

In the meantime, here's a couple of photos from Sissinghurst, which I finally visited a few weeks ago.

Enjoy the sunshine!

People just come and go: The end of Mad Men

People just come and go and no one says goodbye.

Don Draper, Season Seven, Episode Fourteen.

Spoiler alert, obviously.

It's all over now. I don't know what I expected to happen in the last episode of Mad Men, but it certainly wasn't Don sat cross-legged at the top of a cliff, meditating. Nor was it an actual advert.

I wasn't thrilled with the Benetton-esque, corny advert for the most famous drinks company in the world, a company that has a poor ethical record (sorry Matthew Weiner, but the groundbreaking inclusion in the 1970s of an Asian woman with a pottu doesn't change my feelings about that). The company has allegedly left people wanting clean water, polluted the area around manufacturing plants, and even the Southbank can't escape its all-branding eye: the London Eye is now red in its debt.

Then I remembered something awful: when we were about to leave primary school, my friend Claudine and I would walk around the playground during break time, singing the 1987 advert. Several girls complained to our teacher about how annoying we were, warbling that stupid song all of the time, and Miss Higgins told them, "They're just feeling sad about leaving, so they're singing to show how sad they are." I didn't realise that at the time, but I guess that's what we were doing. So maybe world-famous-drinks-company adverts are about endings as much as togetherness? Appropriately enough, the Mad Men finale aired a week after my last day of lectures at uni, when we said goodbye to some tutors and students who wouldn't be returning in September.

I looked up the 1987 advert and saw that it was re-released in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it was filmed in the beautiful St George's Hall in Liverpool, using 1000 children.

Happiness is...a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you are doing is ok. You are ok.

Don Draper, Season One, Episode One.

A few years ago, I wrote about Mad Men and hoped that Joan would reclaim her maiden name and get the chance to do the creative work she was clearly capable of doing. Starting up her own company with both of her surnames, after leaving her boyfriend and the horribly sexist McCann-Erickson, was even better. What a change from the woman who showed new secretary Peggy Olsen around the office ten years earlier, saying, "With any luck, you'll end up living in the country and you won't have to work at all." I was so pleased for Peggy, too - even though I cheered at the Harris-Olsen proposal, I kind of understood how she wanted to carry on working on her own terms (well, sort of) and at her own pace. I also think that she didn't want to leave Don behind again. But as Stan said to her before they (OMG!) got together, "You have to let him go."

I didn't bawl my eyes out, although I suspect I will when I'm ready to watch it again. But I did get a lump in my throat when Sally cooked dinner for her brother Bobby after he miserably tried to fend for himself, and a knot in my stomach when Don said his goodbye-for-nows to Peggy and Betty.

I didn't quite have the stomach for a Harris-Olsen Bloody Mary the next morning, but this jam on toast was a breakfast substitute for an Old-fashioned.

You're born alone and you die alone, and this world just dumps a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget.

Don Draper, Season One, Episode One.

Like other people who didn't want to believe Mad Men had ended and were stuck in denial (only anger, bargaining and depression to go until we reach acceptance), the following night I went right back to the beginning and started watching the first season. I forgot how much younger the men looked, how even Ken Cosgrove was as sexist as the others at the start ("You've got to let them know what kind of guy you are - then they'll know what kind of girl to be"), how adorable Sally was as a child, and how wide-eyed and sweet Betty was at the beginning. And if you don't believe me, watch this scene with Betty talking Sally through first kisses. Like Lori in The Walking Dead, Betty wasn't exactly a fan favourite, but I really liked her. RIP Mrs Robinson.

We're all so lucky to be here.

Betty Draper, Season One, Episode Two.

No use crying...

I saved my first, perfectly-formed delphinium to use in my new, second-hand vase. I arranged it with some white scented hesperis (sweet rocket), white roses and 'Nora Barlow' aquilegia from the garden and greenhouse. But as I turned around so I could move back to quickly photograph it, I heard a crash.

Gutted. After much cursing (sorry neighbours for the morning wake up call) I chucked the flowers in this old, first-hand vase, and they don't look nearly as good.

Mind you, despite being broken in the middle, the delphinium lasted another six days.

On the same morning as Vase-gate, I made a small posy of my flowers for Sara, the Garden Museum's sustainability trainee, who has just left to go on maternity leave. No disasters with that, fortunately! There were calendula, tagetes, aquilegia, and gorgeous-smelling sage and thyme.

And on Saturday I made a posy with another delphinium and my first few nigella.

Brews and bells of Ireland

By some marvellous synchronicity, on the day Ireland said yes to equality (see The Pansy Project, which I've mentioned before), I was given a bundle of presents from Ireland: lots of Irish breakfast tea and Irish flower seeds.

I've only been to Ireland once - a fleeting weekend in Dublin five years ago to meet some friends who were staying there. I spotted these coffee pots when we went for tea one afternoon. I'd love to fill them with flowers!