a trickle of pictures, a deluge of rain

Pictures trickle in from friends and family of my daughter's wedding, before the main ones from the photographer in a week or two. 

The bride looked divine, the bride's mother looked like an eccentric orangey red tulip, the bridegroom wore a dandelion buttonhole (as requested), confetti was homemade from our dried flowers, the yurt looked very jolly with beautiful bunting made by the groom's mother, some huge blue glass vases full of foliage, camassia ,white tulips and Solomon's seal, three small hanging globes and lots of bright cheerful jugs on tables on top of runners  spotted in a Balinese market in January and instantly earmarked for the day..... Rowan's posy included significant flowers - hellebores from my mother's garden, rosemary ditto, myrtle for tradition, pale blue brunnera because of the colour, bluebells because they are a favourite flower, yellow ranunculus because Dan's favourite colour is yellow but I didn't want to put dandelions in the bouquet, lily of the valley for their special scent and double white tulips for something traditionally bridal to go with the ivory Belle and Bunty dress. I did think of just giving her a generous handful of bluebells which would have been lovely but I didn't have many proper ones in the garden and thought better of gleaning bucketfuls from the woods....

And ever since the wedding it has rained, and poured, and deluged. The site is now a muddy swamp with puddles, lakes and mini rivers. And finally, after months of stressing about having everything looking lovely,  I just don't mind!

my daughter is married...

The weather was not unkind. My daughter looked utterly beautiful. Her husband is delightful. The ceremony was very moving. The venue looked quite Ok. There will be lots of photos. It was a wonderful day...

wet wedding fever

One reason that I have been away from blogging has been that it has been full on here, not just with wedding orders and trying to get the gardens in some sort of spring shape, but because we have a wedding here this weekend and I have been bring to get the place to look more like a wedding venue than a building site. It has been quite an effort but it was looking lovely earlier this week before the rain came and the sleet and the hail and more rain. Anyway, I'm sure all will be well and photos will follow! As I write a bunch of chaps are erecting the wedding yurt in the pouring rain, and the place is inevitably getting muddier by the minute as they tramp round and round it without putting anything on the ground. The structure looks quite lovely, and I think Rowan and Dan were right to go for an option with a wood stove which may well be more necessary than decorative. I have been rather worried that the yurt company refuse to provide any flooring apart from tarps and cocomatting, (in fact its the one thing I've been stressing over) as I reckon about 100 chairs on soft ground could be a little interesting, but the bride and groom are convinced it's all fine so I'm trying hard to ignore my worries.... To stop my personal stress levels rising with the mud levels the ever helpful Greg of Llangwathan Marquees came to my rescue and has dropped off lots of linking flooring/tracking to go outside and stop the mud spreading everywhere so I can breath a sigh of relief that at least the whole place shouldn't turn into a total mudfest, though it's already getting there. And the rain continues! It is rather a shame.


Lots of wedding bouquets have been going out, the double white tulips are ever popular at this time of year, and finally we have a good crop of lily of the valley.  I'm particularly loving some complex deeper pink tulips..... And the order book is looking exciting. Now I just need the flowers to grow!

history/politics

On 26th March it was the 70th anniversary of the first women's transport to Auschwitz/Birkenau. Heather Dune Macadam, author of the wonderfully moving Rena's Promise (renaspromise.com, please check it out and buy a copy if you haven't read it) made a pilgrimage to Auschwitz as part of the commemoration, as well as organised international vigils to mark the day. Her partner Simon Worrall (also check out his work both as a journalist and author, simonworrallauthor.com) accompanied her and gave a moving reading at the barbed wire fence. They took a wreath from here and hung it on the fence, it was full of seed heads which we all hope might just scatter some seeds that could germinate there and provide some beauty in such sadness.

And with the wonderful news of Aung San Suu Kyi's return to some kind of position in her homeland, Stephen Hopkins sent me a reminder of his time on the plinth in trafalgar square when he took flowers from here in the Burmese national colours and threw them down from the plinth.