A weary flower grower!

I'm taking next week off from orders, which seems a bit perverse as there are enough flowers in the field to fill about a dozen marquees, as one of the visitors last Sunday observed.... I have realised that I am terribly behind with the non-growing side of the business so need to close my eyes to the flowers for a few days and catch up on the admin side. I also realise that by the end of some days recently I am becoming less than entirely reasonable, partly the fact that I have finally given in to some grim summer flu and am never good at being under the weather and partly perhaps that I am a little weary and not entirely rational - for example the husband made some mildly irritating comment a couple of days ago that would normally be water off a ducks back and I respond by saying (feeling entirely rational!) that I might as well leave and take the gardens with me! Now the idea of leaving house home and husband took even me by surprise, but to think that it would be entirely rational to consider moving about 15,000 plants, trees, shrubs, bulbs, tunnel, studio and everything else suggests that I am not quite my usual self. So a bit of a quiet week is probably rather a good wheeze......

On the bright side, I could probably fill about a dozen marquees with flowers with no problem, except that it is pouring with rain now so I would be loath to pick anything. Happily I had bouquets to send out today as well as other flowers and the rain held off long enough for me to pick in perfect condition. The bride wanted largely whites and greens with a few blue points so she and her bridesmaids had beautiful white phlox, white Nigella hispanica African Bride, blue scabious (various varieties) eryngium (her granny loved them), lots of seed pods, white stocks, green ammi, white ammi, cosmos foliage... I think the bouquets looked gorgeous and hope she loves them too. There were also several (coincidentally, curiously) golden wedding bouquets to send out and it couldn't be a better time as we have so many gorgeous yellows and golds in the gardens at the moment, from rudbeckias through to dahlias with lomas, achilleas, bupleurum and others. Lovely when things occur at the right time.

I was partly amused partly fed up to see today that the local girl who has started doing exactly the same thing after visiting me is even trying to sell flowers containing the ammi visnaga that originally came from here, very odd!