All dried out - In a Vase on Monday

The fresh garden flowers are taking a break this week, allowing me to show some of the dried flowers prepared last summer.  The vase is a soap stone one bought in China and given to me by my mother several decades ago. 

 

The pale green of the vase is not quite the right hue or shade to match with fresh foliage and flowers, so at last it gets an outing and pairs fairly well with some of the flowers I dried last year.  

Pseudodictamnus acetabulosus

Pseudodictamnus acetabulosus dries well and keep its form, and Origanum 'Emma Stanley' too with the colour only fading slightly.

Origanum 'Emma Stanley' dried

I have quite a few dried poppy seed heads around so choose three for the vase, and at the base are three more where the outer skin has been removed to leave the fine inner formations. A couple of years ago I noticed such 'skeletons' where I had dropped poppy seed heads on the beds, and used it again last year to great advantage.

With fellow gardeners who love to bring some of the garden indoors,  I am linkins this post to Cathy's In a Vase on Monday. 

In the Garden at the start of February 2026

 This post is one where I note six things from the garden, and like others link this to Jim's anchoring post. Last week Jim posted some 'then and now views of his garden plants' and as I was looking through and trying to delete old pictures I came across a couple of interesting ones. For the 2026 picture of the Chamaecyparis, I had to go out in the pouring rain this morning!  It has been the wettest of weeks, with just one day of a few hours without heavy rain.

1. This lovely golden evergreen started off as a very small specimen when I bought it in May 2019, three years later it had already been potted up twice.

Chamaecyparis pisifera var. filifera early 2021

Now it is a fine specimen and the pot is almost too large for me to move. Had I room in the garden it would probably have been planted out.  However in the pot it does look good standing on the pebbled area.

Chamaecyparis pisifera var. filifera 2026

2. I took cuttings from a friend's shrub in Kenwilworth, and since then have taken even more cuttings.  One of them was planted by the bird bath.

Lonicera 'Baggesen's Gold' Feb 2023

In the Summer of 2024, I had one of those frequent urges to do a little prunning and turned the Lonicera  into a pompom topiary. This is how it is looking this week.

3. We had one day of glorious sunshine, sufficient to warm the cockles of one's heart, and in the garden there was the sound of bees and a huge bumble bee, and flowers were opening.

Crocus chrysanthus 'Romance'

4. I often prune the rose bushes around mid February, but all the mild weather has led to earlier growth.  It doesn't take me long to prune the several bushes, rambler and the other climbers, all were pruned this first week of February.

Ghislaine de Feligonde new shoots

5. I like little plants and this week two of my smallest snowdrops are in full fligh in the Conservatory bed. One which is slowing increasing is Galanthus Margaret Billington (Formerly Quadripetala) . With small upright stems as the blooms open the call me to check the number of petals, snowdrops usually have three outer segments, but this one varies from three to five outer segments.  

Galanthus Margaret Billington

Whether the it is the same bulb that grows more segments as it matures I am unsure.  When I attend the Snowdrop festival in Shepton in a couple of weeks time, I shall try and ask the growers.  I bought this one early in 2023 when we visited Jenny and Mike Spiller at Elworthy Cottage, and since they will be at the festival they will be the best to ask.

The second little snowdrop closeby is Galanthus nivalis Charlotte.  Last year I divided the small clump, and I am delighted that the small bulbs survived this.

Galanthus nivalis 'Charlotte' 

6. In mid January I showed the northern end of the Conservatory bed with the darker cyclamen coum, the flowers are still growing strong and may actually be more floriferous, here is the bed a little further along, where the paler cyclamen coum are making their mark. I've mentioned before that I am aiming for the Millefleur effect in the spring for this border and it certainly is close to achieving this.  Yet to come out are the primulas and corydalis.  Starting in January, growing through February, and into March, this little bed is one of my garden's delights at this time of the year.

Because I left the top of a bag of compost open last week, I now have a bag of 'compost soup'!  And speaking of love: I have a pair of robins what come to check if I have anything for them, but they are still very shy. Here is one the cock I think on the wall.

Turkish Simit

 I've been baking our regular bread which ranges from a wholemeal cobb to a seeded multigrained sourdough, but I haven't been more adventurous and trying out new recipes for a few months. It was seeing my friend on Facebook with his trial of the other recipe this month that pulled me out of the doldrums.  So thank you Nigel.  Together with Nigel we set up a facebook group that worked our way through all the recipes in a new sourdough recipe book. Having like minded pals can really help with encouragement etc.

For February the Bake With Jack club were given two recipes of which this is one of them.  For Turkish Simit you need Grape Molasses.  I couldn't believe my luck, but I had recently bought a jar of this up a Rocky Mountain without any idea of how I was going to use it.  I do like buying different ingredients which I are new to me, and now I have opened the jar, I shall be exploring more uses.

As you can see, I need to work on my shaping and proving techniques, and I have an inkling of what I shall try differently. 

I also bought some Pistachio Butter, which I think will go very nicely with this, perhaps topped with a little honey.

Candlemas Bells for In a Vase on Monday

I happened to read just a couple of days ago that today is Candlemas Day.  Therefore as one of the several names for Snowdrops years before Linneaus settled on the name Galanthus was Candlemas bells, it seems so right to feature snowdrops today.

Here in the vase is a selection of some of the larger special snowdrops. The Galanthus nivalis are only just appearing and those would have been the ones picked to adorn churches.

Not being superstituous I haven't waited till now to pick snowdrops.  Apparently before Candlemas Day it unlucky, but for this festival the snowdrop as symbol of purity and hope were picked to adorn Churches and hence not suprisingly can still be found in old churchyards and around old religious places such as abbeys. When we lived in Kenilworth our walks often took us on snowdrop hunts and the churchyard there never disappointed. 

The little brass snail is an old and the decorated pebbles are all dressed up as it were, picked up at a local art exhibition.  As usual I am linking into Cathy's post of her blog: Rambling in the Garden. 

Six on Saturday - The last for January 2026

Storm Chandra and other depresssions have brought so much rain to Somerset.  We are above the flooded levels but our regular walks have had to be curlained with waters sweeping across roads etc. It is at times like these that I am grateful for the paths and stepping stones and no grass which allows me into the garden with the possibility of enjoying the bits of the garden which may not be in sight from the comfort of the conservatory. I've waxed lyrical about some the snowdrops in the garden this week so if you want a little more variety I am sure you will find Jim's post certainly is as will be other posts linking into his.

1. With weeks of hardly any sunshine and dark days of above average temperatures, it is no surprise that the snowdrops in the shade haven't done as well as those in more open spots .  Signs are longer pulled out and weak stems of Galanthus Marjorie Brown.  I have read that snowdrops from the elwesii group do well in sunnier and drier spots, so this clump will be moved. 

Galanthus Marjorie Brown

2. In comparison this little clump of Galanthus nivalis 'Sprite' out in the sunnier position is looking healthy and hearty.

 

Galanthus nivalis 'Sprite'

3. "Is hope all that remains? Of course not. We have courage and inspiration and imagination and determination and resilience. And lots more besides. We have spring just around the corner." My SOS 'Sis' Gill Heavens has the most wonderful turn of phrase and these were some of her words from her post last week.  Also thanks to Gill, I was in receipt last spring of a pretty Primula vulgaris 'Taigetos' thanks to JK 'The Man from Del Monte' from whose garden it came.  Earlier this week I noticed that one of the clumps is just starting to flower.  I've read that it is sterile and increased by division only. 

Primula vulgaris 'Taigetos'

4. Galanthus 'Squashed Fly on a Windscreen' nivalis f. pleniflorus 'Blewbury Tart' first arrived in the garden a gift from Cathy in 2018.  I thought I had lost it. Had I just overlooked it or failed to mention it?  Blewbury Tart certainly deserves a place in this week's Six on Saturday: quirky and dishevelled and definitely filling me with joy on rediscovering it in the garden. I had even removed it from one of my lists as having been lost.  I found it just at the foot of the bird bath growing through the mint that I promised myself that I would get rid of, but knowingly leaving a few stems thinking they would be nice in drinks, deluding myself that it would not be outgrowing its place.  

'In 1975, Alan noticed ‘Blewbury Tart’ in a churchyard in the village of Blewbury in Oxfordshire, England, where he grew up, and collected it with the permission of  Vicar Hugh Pickles. The famous galanthophile Primrose Warburg helped to name it because she called it Blewbury Muffin when Alan gave it to her, thus inspiring the name ‘Blewbury Tart’.  

I asked Alan if there was a special anecdote that I could relate here.  He told me that when he first exhibited it in 1985, a prominent British journalist said it looked like a “squashed fly on a windscreen”.   Nevertheless Avon offered it for sale in 1992.  It is an unruly double with an outward-facing dark green inner rosette encircled by three narrow outer segments.  It looks like it is having a bad hair day and always makes me smile when I see it.  Alan relates that another prominent British galanthophile, Ruby Baker, considers it a favorite'. From the description on Carolyn's Shade Garden. 

5. I have a few books on Snowdrops, not many, more than one and less than I would probably want, but same time each year, I pick them up and have a read of sections.  Each year I get to learn a little more. In Her book The Plant Lovers Guide to Snowdrops Naomi Slade mentions that Snowdrops look best planted in company and one of the suggestions is to for them to be planted up with Euphorbia myrsinites. I have Euphorbia mysinites in the front garden and I may need to try cuttings in a few months time.  I can see how the contrast in form would go well.

Euphorbia mysinites

6. In the front garden I also have some snowdrops that are really good dooers.  It was one of the first snowdrops I bought when I moved here, they seed pods are fertile and I leave them under the leaf litter under the Amelanchiers where they germinate and grow up into little seedlings.  After a couple of seasons I move these to another spot in the front garden. I think they are Galanthus Elwesii 'Valentine'. I am growing just this one cultivar in this area, and after nearly nine years are making a good display.

Galanthus Elwesii 'Valentine'

The crocus are starting to come and there will be just a little more variety hopefully next week.