Flowers and Books

 Although I have been somewhat lax in joining the rendezvous for In a Vase on Monday, that is not to mean that flowers have not been cut and arranged.  They have however been just simple affairs, and could not be called 'arrangements' in any sense of the word.  The vases  just hold a few flowers which have either caught my attention, or needed to be cut as part of the management of the garden or plant.

In the first instance below, this vase has been sitting on the mantlepiece for a number of months.  This is a rather special vase to me and the twigs picked up from under a road side growing tree after the storms earlier this year.  They are from The Alder Tree and although bearing both male and female catkins on the same tree, these little cone like fruits are the remains of the female fruit. I am often pulled towards monochrome arrangements and this has to be a favourtie at the moment.

I'm a little behind in linking in my reading and the best book that I have read for a very long time, and a good pairing for this arrangement of the Alder, is How to Read a Tree by Tristan Gooley, of which this is an excellent review.

How to Read a Tree by Tristan Gooley

For my next arrangement only picked earlier today it is roses, stems from a couple of the Rose Home Florist Timeless Collection. No greenery seemed to match the rich green of the healthy leaves, so none was chosen. 

To go with this arrangement 

This was one of the two books we discussed at our last WI Book Club lunch meeting.  I quite liked this book, and felt the style and perhaps simplicity implied to me that it would be the second book the main character Marianne Clifford would write especially as it is written in the first person.  I would give it a four out of five, but would quite surprised that few others in the group liked it at all. 

With having to clear a bed of old growth partly to mulch and to allow new growth to emerge for another wave of flowering, I just popped a few saved stems into a little vase.  Blue and white make for a nice combination and up close the structure is exquisite. White  Centaurea Montana Alba and the Scabiosa 'Butterfly Blue.

The second book we discussed was There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak.  What a beautiful book, and a great story linking people across different eras, backgrounds, and continents.  Our group apart from two who gave up about a third of the way in, really liked it, and with their encouragement, those two were encouraged to persevere and it will be interesting to hear how they got on at our next meeting. 

There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

Some time ago I enjoyed meeting Elif Shafak, and also hearing her at a book presentation at Kenilworth library, and have read at least two of her books.  I really would like to read more of hers.