My lovely churns at the River Cottage relaunch!

I'm quite amused to see that the main picture of the River Cottage HQ relaunch was my milk churns full of wildish and edible flowers.....

http://www.stylenest.co.uk/food/food-news/river-cottage-hq-relaunch/

And it won't just be my churns but me too at the River Cottage Autumn Fair in September!

busy buzzy

I seem to have been too busy to get to the computer and add to the blog. It’s been all go – in a good way. In the garden roses have been magnificent but many are resting now before a second major showing, though all my newer cutting roses are happily keeping flowering away – deadheading is a major preoccupation every day.

It was fun doing flowers for a wedding two weekends ago at River Cottage and a beautiful local church, there are squillions of flowers at the moment thanks to the weather though they’re blooming and finishing faster than we can keep up with the deadheading! Cornflowers are particularly massed this year, and ammi is just loving the weather and blooms are floating everywhere in the main cutting patch and in the beds. The big yellow heads of dill are also rather magnificent in massed splendour. As it’s a newly planted garden it’s interesting to see what is doing best where, this year anything with a bit of shade is very happy, but if it had been a year like last they probably would scarcely have shown their faces. Paper tissue headed little multi layered poppies are glorious, I know they are ephemeral but they are so beautiful they sometimes almost make me weep.  And they are lovely for a few days picked, just such a delicate contrast to anything else. Maybe best of everything is that they are alive with bees, hoverflies, all manner of happy little buzzing insects. There's quite a cacophony!

I provided some large partly edible arrangements in churns for the River Cottage barn relaunch last week, flowering rocket with dill, daylilies,  lots of annuals, gorgeous scabious in dark reds, pinks, purples, blues…… Perhaps my favourite this week are the nigella hispanica, their blues so intense and their stamens so pronounced and curious.

And this weekend there was a wedding in Somerset at a rather wonderful venue, Maunsell House. Peacocks and fading splendour and a wonderful garden. The roads were so busy that I turned off the main drag on the way back and drove slowly through the Somerset levels which was just heavenly on a hot summer’s day – attractive hamlets and villages, houses covered in roses, gardeners out enjoying it all with hats and wheelbarrows much in evidence, church towers peering through a gentle heat haze in the middle of a view that goes on for miles and miles without interruption. It was a real treat to be meandering through it all rather than my usual rush. I felt very fortunate.

Then back to an increasingly crisping garden, I am uneasy about watering much but sometimes it just has to be done. Even the phlox have been burning off but on the plus side the agapanthus are overjoyed by their prolonged exposure to the sun. I’m fretting slightly about the new trees in the field as they are exposed and sunburnt but I hope they’ll be Ok, I’m giving them all a couple of buckets of water once or twice a week and hope they’ll survive and eventually flourish.

I have had some lovely communications from satisfied customers over the past few weeks, it is so thoughtful when people get in touch just to say how they have loved a bouquet they have received. On the less positive side I have been getting a bit frustrated with lack of progress towards the sale of the house and gardens near Hay but it finally looks as though we're nearly there. I am certainly very positive about the lack of necessity for shopping at this time of year – it is the right way round when there is little in the fridge but loads in the garden!

bees bees bees and other wildlife

The garden is alive with bees. Everywhere. And today I went up the ladder to chop back the R banksia lutea that is coming in through the bedroom windows and appearing out of the tiles on the roof (not good) to find there is a swarm in the roof. The descent of the ladder was swift.

Last week I discovered it was an adder not a grass snake in the workshop. And little adders.

And I spent last Monday clearing out where mr and mrs rat had made their home near the oil tank.

Squirrels are dancing on the big lawn at night.

Moles are trying to burrow through the heavy clay and only succeeding in making runnels.

Deer are eyeing up the new trees.

Dogs are at least keeping rabbits at bay at the moment.

And int he gardens there are roses roses roses and more roses. Honeysuckles. Pinks. All manner of scrumptious scents. Plus campanula of all sorts doing really well here, peonies have been spectacular but are now sadly all but over, poppies are appearing everywhere, the little picotee ones that I so like as fillers. Cornflowers are flowering so fast to be unpickable, ammi is overflowing the box beds, dill floating above phlox and astrantia, ranunculus are blinging it, the only serious failure has been delphiniums which are worse than disappointing....

One day I will have time and inclination to take some pictures.

Meanwhile wish me luck rehoming the bees.

In an English country ga-a-rden

Despite best efforts I haven't been on the blog for too long, apologies. It has been quite busy! In fact I have little idea what I've been up to for the past two weeks but there have been weddings, events, bouquets... and a lot of gardening. It's very exciting having a new garden as everything is both expected and totally unexpected, things are too slow and too fast. Existential angst is the order of the day, every stage is so perfect I don't want it to pass but at the same time I look forward to the next stage. Is this age? Or gardening?

In the garden it's all about roses and peonies at the moment. Greatest delight is discovering a magic rose. I have no idea which climber/rambler/scrambler she is but a beautiful and delightfully scented little yellow rose  is not just scrambling through an old apple tree but has also rooted into the cambium of the tree so the tree is now both apple and rose. She is actually growing in and from the tree, in many places. How magic is that?

How I wish I had listened when I had been told which rose here was which. But too late for regrets, everything is blooming like mad. All the roses I moved are healthy as can be, joining at least 50 established shrub roses and other old fashioned numbers. The scents are unbelievable, and each one is individual. Oh to be a perfumier. (perhaps better than a flower grower right now as the last two days have been so heavy and damp and still that all the beautiful roses were unpickable, but they will all end up in the airing cupboard slowly drying for confetti. I love going in there, it smells like heaven).

Oh and apart from roses another favourite plant is blooming like mad. Phlomis Italica, the beautiful Italian sage, how often I tried to grow it from cuttings in my Herefordshire garden and never succeeded as it was just too cold, but here it is a mass of little pink heads and silky soft felty grey leaves, gorgeous, and a wonderful addition to bouquets. Although this weekends wedding is yellow. And most of my garden is pink and mauve. Hey ho. 

I spent a whole day weeding the new field patch from thistles. But it's interesting seeing what weeds come up as bosses here, they are a different variety from Herefordshire at least. But just as vicious! I just have dills, cornflowers, cosmos and calendula out there at the moment but am about to thin larkspurs and ammis and send them out. And I have planted tulip trees, birches, rowans, walnut, viburnums, magnolias and lilacs out there too.....

Today I had a load of bottles and jars delivered by a young chap whose life history I now know and worry about. In the time it took to unload a pallet I discovered he had come down from Lancaster with his girlfriend who was escaping domestic violence from an ex. Then she found he was friendly with a woman who became her ex's new paramour so she attacked him with a frying pan and knives. He then pushed her away and was done for Aggravated Bodily Harm. She left and went back to her ex. He is now living in a rented room for £60 a week including food (sounded very reasonable I thought!) and going out with a barmaid from the local hostelry, but he finds it difficult living in Dorset as parts remind him too much of home and he gets homesick although he didn't get on with his family so maybe he's going to go and work in Dubai with his father (his "real" father he said) though he's quite happy at the moment. So now you know too!

But normally it's all about the flowers. And I am enjoying every offering and making them up into treasures for customers. I am trying to get some wedding photos to appear. Soon! 

linen and roses

I enjoy doing intimate weddings. Especially at Barnsley House and especially for Americans who often have very precise ideas. Yesterday linen bags filled with home made confetti were requested. So I carried on the theme into their chair backs and tied their buttonholes and corsages with linen too...

Cecile Brunner is quite rightly called the buttonhole rose, I'm not usually a fan of rose buttonholes but she is just such a sweetie. Having moved further south west roses are in full burst at the gardens. I am almost sad, I absolutely adore this time of year when everything is so full of promise. Then everything bursts into full bloom and there's a sadness tinging the joy.

Promise of summer

Walking up the lane this morning the smell of summer hit me, that lovely blast of heavy scent, a mixture of wildflowers, mown grass, warmth, general vegetation. And the wildflowers here are spectacular -  fields and hedge edges of lady's smock, bluebells, cow parsley and dandelions have now given way to queen annes lace. buttercups and vetches, clovers and campions, stitchworts, orchids, dozens of different grasses. Though the silage fields are sad monocrops of rye grass, with a few patches of campions and buttercups daring to creep in round the edges. There are lots of bees out and it is particularly good to see butterflies, today I spotted several little blue ones but I haven't a clue which they are.

I keep meaning to take photographs of progress but once again am camera less. I must sort this out,  if anyone has any suggestions for the best smallish but not snap and shoot camera, I'm all ears.... I did have a good Canon Eos something or other., it died, I got a lumix, I don't get on with it at all and the battery holds no charge or some reason so every time I do find it and decide to snap it won't play.

I'm hoping for photos from Lydia's wedding soon, she was the gorgeous bride who wanted guinea fowl feathers in a headdress, she said she liked wearing it so much that she didn't take it off after the ceremony as planned but kept it on all evening. I imagine it was looking a bit faded by then! This weekend was a very relaxed wedding in Bridport, rather fun to do something completely local. Next week it's Gloucestershire on Thursday, Dorset at the weekend.

Sadly three people who were coming together or the course a week tomorrow have had to cancel because of a memorial service so I'm cancelling the day - it doesn't seem much fun for just two people but as one of them is on holiday in Turkey she may turn up anyway though I have mailed her. If she does appear I have promised her a day in the garden helping with anything she would like to do, and with whatever info she wants thrown in, obviously for no charge. Somebody was shocked that I hadn't taken deposits from everyone so I am not out of pocket, but my reasoning goes like this - people pay when they have had a good day, if they can't come that is bad luck for them as well as me, if they are nice people, and they always are, and they can't come for a genuine reason they always offer to pay anyway. The three non-comers from next week offered to pay but that would be stealing as I haven't given them anything in return.

On deposits, I do need to apologise to brides though, in theory I should take deposits three months in advance and some brides do like to work that way. In practice this year any help here is going in the garden, not the house or office, as there is so much to do to get the gardens up and running here, so I am doing all the admin. And I am notoriously admin light because I am rather too busy to do everything though I do try. Sorry!

Best in the garden today - white and dark red peonies, catmint and the first campanula.

Sorry?

It's 2pm on Sunday. The phone goes. I run in from the garden where I'm having lunch with friends. And trip over the pup on the way and nearly go flying, but I was expecting a call and needed to answer.  It was not the call I expected but went like this (verbatim):

Caller: "Are you the flower company?"
Me: "Yes." (it seemed the easiest answer)
Caller: "Can you send flowers for me to arrive tomorrow?"
Me: "I'm afraid that isn't possible."
Caller: "No need to be rude." And she put the phone down.

Um, she phoned on Sunday lunchtime. With not even an excuse me for bothering you at the weekend or any kind of little politenesses......