Garden flowers in a vase on Monday

Even part way through October it is still possible to pick a few blooms for In a Vase on Monday.  This post is going to be the 300th of the series of Monday vases which I have created to link into Cathy's blog where having crafted her first vase many years ago has been gathering fellow gardeners and flower lovers.  Cutting flowers from the garden is a sure way to record what is going on there. 

The flowers were not grown specially for arranging, instead I pick bits and pieces from the garden.  The vase is a studio pottery vase I happened to spot in a charity shop many years ago.

 

The starting point for this vase is the white Chrysanthemum White Gem 21f, which I bought from Halls of Heddon a couple of seasons ago.  

The sedums are looking good and here we have two varieties on the left of the picture is Hylotelephium 'Herbstfreude', better known as Sedum Autumn Joy.  Most of the blooms in the sun have gained a red rusty shade, but this one was shaded, and on the left is the lovely pale pink Sedum 'Frosty Morn'. This is a particularly long flowering sedum.

Both flowers and seed heads of Japanese anemone 'September Charm' are used and below on the right the flowers look a little bashful.

Lastly adding foliage and a little accent is the Fuchsia Tom West, a nice plant at the front of the border and again one I have had for years, 

Six things in the garden - SOS 12.10.2024

 There is nothing quite like a walk around the neighbourhood and looking over walls etc to catch what is looking good in gardens locally.  For a wider view and also into back gardens the place to go is firstly over at Jim's at 'garden ruminations' and through the links there within the comments you can view many other gardens.

The bucket which if left out gives me an idea of the amount of rain that has fallen.  It was a bucket load, really, right up to the top over two days, I wished I had taken a picture! The mulches have been ordered and are now stacked ready for application, but I did have time to do a few jobs as soon as it stopped. I was suffering with cabin fever after the two days of rain, and being outside in the garden is a sure cure.

Yesterday it was dry and sunny, yes all within one week such a huge variation.  

1. I am in need of pink asters as I have seen some lovely ones along my local walks.  In the meantime here is a little dwarf one: Symphyotrichum novi belgii 'Trudi Ann' which has survived the downfalls very nicely and is front of the conservatory border. 

2. Just as I thought I had seen the last of the bumblebees for the season, when the sun came out there they were, and I suppose it is because there are still several plants in bloom, with the asters, and yet to flower chrysanthemums.  The Fuchsias seem to have been a good food source.  I've allowed this Fuchsia which is a hardy one with quite large flowers to grow with some wooden stems over a couple of years with just the softer growth cut back, I had seen this way of treating hardy Fuchsias on a garden visit to East Lambrook Manor with the Alpine Garden Society a couple of years ago.  On Thursday and Friday they were humming with the sound of the bees.

3. Ladybirds too have been noticed, such as this one on the seed head of grass Miscanthus nepalensis,  I'm not sure if this is a 22-spot ladybird or it could be a harlequin ladybird.

4. I guess a snail enthusiast would have been delighted to find this sight in a pile a broken crocks stored in under the potting shed, and then gone on to find many more.  Snails too go into hibernation.

5, When I am scrolling through Facebook I come across interest groups probably selected for me by AI and my eye was caught by the Kusamono and Shitakusa group.  The form is a little miniature gathering of plants to show alongside Bonsai.  I have neither the fancy pots or the artistic flair to participate, however it has perhaps shaped my view of the arrangements I had made in the past.   I have been known to grow little miniature gardens in old bonsai pots or shallow dishes, and also love the moss which grows on them. Here moss covered stones were appropriated from another bowl that had recently been dismantled. 

Having found a little self grown fern which will probably grow into a Japanese painted fern Athyrium niponicum which I have had in the garden for a long time, I placed Sisyrinchium biscutella to act as 'the grass thing', and a little creeping Thymus serpyllum minimus which I just happened to have bought from Graham at his stall at Wells market.

6. Loropetalum Fire Dance has now recovered nicely after its ordeal and hard prune back in 2023. I find this red leaved Chinese witch hazel works well contrasting with other plants in the sheltered shady border. This will be one of the border that will be mulched over the coming week.

Loropetalum Fire Dance

Even when most garden flowers are over I still love to be out 'playing in the garden'.  This coming week I shall be mulching and moving plants indoors and into shelter in the shed. the garden is small so it all within my capabilities, which I am pleased about.  

Poppy Seed Heads in a Vase on Monday

This week's post and arrangement has been inspired by finding these on the soil in the garden.  Gastropods that is to cover all the little snails and slugs that are currently not only tidying away fallen items but also green living material.

 They are so beautiful and hopefully I will have time this week to make a sketch of them.

How did they get to be like that?  A few weeks ago I threw out the dried flower arrangement that had been gracing our dining room for over a year, and had chucked the seed heads over one of the beds.  I love poppies, and after they have filled a gap, and set seed, I harvest them and stick them in a vase. 

 Only last Sunday I decided to cut off the heads of this year's crop to harvest the poppy seeds which I use in my baking.  The seeds are smaller than the commercially available baker's poppy seeds, and it just gives me so much satisfaction to use whatever is in the garden.

Well it is a Vase on Monday, so I had better get on with something in a vase. The poppy seed heads had been sitting in the taller of the glass vases, and yes I had even kept the stems as the form of the pale straw and green stems added a dramatic composition especially with when the shadows fall against the wall.  

That probably doesn't cut the mustard so a little close up of a very pretty glass vase, a present from my Australian sister, from one of her holidays.  This vase is a little work of art, as within the blue glass are slices of smaller 'flowers' of glass and the surface is marbled with gold leaf applied before the glass is fully blown out.

Just as somewhere to put them, there are some blooms that I had made with wire. And just my chance it was in here that I had deposition the tiniest of the poppy seed heads.

Later when I have rattled my seed heads empty, I shall scatter the empty ones over the garden, and watch as each day more of the outer casing is etched away, and hopefully I shall be able to harvest more eroded seed heads, and am already planning what to do with them.

A short note about the pie dish that I used this year to lay the seed heads in.  It is a stoneware pie dish by the studio potter Simon Eeles.  I spoke with him at his exhibition at Ford Abbey when I went with our WI group 'Bloomin Fun' a couple of years ago and fell in love with this piece.

For real fresh flower arrangements Cathy will have come up with something beautiful, and I am sure there will be many more linked into her post this week.  

Somerset Rural Life Museum - another excellent exhibition ‘Spinning A Yarn’

‘Spinning A Yarn’ is a celebration of British wool and since we are already members of this excellent museum in Glastonbury, we decided to head over on Saturday morning.

The Mapstone Gallery had a few displays about the history of wool through artefacts and oral histories. 

Both Mr S and myself greatly admired these samples of hand weaving by Gladys Dickinson and Norah Biddulph. Having first met int he 1930s Gladys and Norah begun their small spinning and weaving business.  They used locally sourced wool and natural dyes to manufacture woven textiles.  Having been commissioned in 1956 by Mrs Harry Fox to weave a curtain based on the colours of a piece of serpentine rock, they then went on to use coloured stones as an inspiration for their designs.

There was a variety of contemporary artworks of which these caught my eye:

By Jane Ogden, Form  Four Weld

Gladys Paulus

After a short rest with coffee in the sunny barn courtyard, we went into the barn to watch the film by Trevor Pitts.  We sat on benches topped in lovely soft warm wool mats and had wool blankets to keep us warm had we needed them. It was interesting to learn a little more about Fernhill Farm, up on the Mendips. Just now I have found a shop selling yarn from sheep reared there: Lace Knittery.

On the other side of the barn a large installation by Nicola Turner took full advantage of both the height and size of the barn, but was too dark to photograph. (activate to see a picture of it)

I recognised the style as their had been a piece last year when we visited the Wells Art  Contemporary last year. 

Our walk around Uphill near Weston super Mare

 From our walks along Brean Down which juts out into the sea, looking north along the coast towards Weston super Mare a church is silhouetted above a cliff just the other side of a small estuary.  We often wondered where that was and whether one day we would go and explore the area. 

Our weekly outing was moved to Thursday as fine weather was forecast. We parked with ease along Uphill way and turning left by the Marina found ourself on a well surfaced path leading along the base of the old quarry along which we first came across a preserved lime kiln and later the explosives store.

 Later we turned and followed a beaten track up the grassland to the tower and then the church.

Uphill Tower

From the hill top above the quarry there were fine views across the estuary towards Wales. Brean down is just on the left hand side.

Views towards to Wales

From the Church a steep rocky footpath criss crossed lower down by many tree roots took us straight down the hill back to Uphill Way, where we had a light lunch at La Cucina Italiana, which was really Greek rather than Italian, then we wound our way back home along the picturesque southern slopes of the Mendips.

Pimping my porridge - I've been doing it for years

I was chatting to a couple of young people this week, that is just something I do, I love to chat to people, anyone I meet young or old. 

We were talking about breakfasts and they were really quite surprised that me, a seemingly old fogey, well they did not use that expression, but really to anyone in their early twenties, I am an old lady,  that I 'pimped' my porridge.  They were also really interested in the concept and asked me for ideas, which I shared.

This is just one example from this week: sweet cinnamon, demerara sugar, sliced banana and roasted pumpkin seed. It is never the same from one bowl to another.

If you are a breakfast person and love porridge, how do you like yours?

Six on Saturday - 5 October 2024

It is getting harder to find lovely clumps of pretty flowers to talk about, and I can feel the boss will have to be a little lenient with me.  The great gardener is Jim, and he is such a generous host so it is always a delight to see what he, and our SOSs are talking about each week. I loved how he describes himself this week '"as cheerleader for the Six on Saturday memettes". You too can become memettes, it is quite uncompetitive but we often have colourful photographs to draw attention.

Although the week has ended on a drier sunnier note, this magical sunrise potent of Red Sky in the morning Shepherd's warning was followed by very wet and winder weather during the earlier part of the week.  I took this through the glass of the conservatory a view of the garden, but I don't know if it counts as one of the SOS.

Colourful sunrise in the garden

Now to ones that I think count as six!

1. I acquired Scilla hughii earlier this year and have since learnt it has been renamed Oncostema hughii.  I noticed it had just come into growth again and decided to place it in the gravel garden. I think it will look good there.  

This is the picture I used to sketch and keep a record of this. 

Oncostema hughii in the gravel garden

I keep a spreadsheet of the plants I acquire, I write a blog showing many of the plants, and have tried to make a map of where some of the snowdrops are, and labels in the ground get lost. I enjoy writing notes, and woke last Sunday morning with an idea to help remind me of what plants are where in the garden, it wasn't long before I got sketching, in that quiet time after lunch, whilst Mr S clears up the kitchen and washes up.  This is my first entry.  

The colours are not quite right, but this is not art, it simply a nice way of observing the garden and noting the names of plants in a certain section and which plants are up on in flower at that particular time.  I hope to keep this up , and getting better at drawing and keep a visual record on paper of new plantings or the look of a section. 

2. The Crassula perforata which I bought from The Newt in 2022, is looking well formed and gaining some bulk, and is almost as good as the one was in their glass house.  This one will be moving to the conservatory here soon. Next year it will get an even bigger pot.

Crassula perforata

3. One of my favourite little plants in the gravel garden and also recently in pots is Phlox bifida 'Ralph Haywood'.  After flowering earlier this year I took several cuttings, which all rooted really well, and now I have placed them in two half pans, and this one is destined for the large square garden table to add interest in the spring.

4. I love the way the little Violas seeds itself no doubt aided by ants. They are either very easy to grow or the garden is well suited to them, probably a bit of both.

5. When we have a couple of days of dry weather, then the roses shine out as does 'Grace', but the blooms don't seem to last very long. Do blooms go over faster in the autumn than during early summer? Having consulted with my friend Hilary who came over twice this week, my roses are in need of a good dose of manure to perk them up, so I promise to follow a much better regime next year.

6. It is always nice to see gardening friends twice in a week, and share garden thoughts and cake.  As we went round the garden the first time, I pointed out that I was feeling cheery as I had finally written labels for all the auriculas that I had split and repotted.  As I had potted them up I set up little groups of the same name around the garden to help me identify the plants. The ones in clay pots are for me, the others were to share with friends. Hillary showed interest in them, and as she is yet to get into this group and has a very large and lovely garden and plenty of room on walls for an auricula stage, I was delighted to give her a good selection.

The second time Hillary came was to bring me a large clump of Nerine bowdenii Wellsii. On the first visit I showed her the empty space by the wall in the front garden where I had only just finished digging out the Ceonothus, and she suggested I try some Nerines as the area is predominately planted with Mediterranean plants. 

After feeling a little in the doldrums, my gardening mojo is starting to return, thank goodness.