In a Vase on Monday - Fading gracefully

 I love the way that words can mean slightly different things. Bearing in mind the effect of the strong sun, one can say that colours fade as the sun bleaches the colours, or in such situations a plant can react or be damaged by excessive light, as I found when I collected some seaweed just beyond the low tide and still in the water in Tresco. Sadly this is not a 'graceful' fading.

During the past summers I have found that the colour of the Rose Open Arms does differ depending on how much sunshine it receives.  On our return from another week by the coast this time overlooking The Isle of Wight, most of the roses were finished, so I decided to have a good trim back of Rose Open Arms but pushed some saved stems into a deep bucket of water in the utility area.  After our drive home on Thursday, and a couple of hours in the garden, it was only Friday when I plonked the stems in a vase for the kitchen. I do like the way real fresh flowers mature, wane and finally need discarding or can even be saved as dried flowers, so for this week, although I only have one type of flower in a vase, I would like to show how beautiful they are over several days.

Of course there is no sun bleaching if flowers are gathered in their early stage, at tight bud or just beyond. Using the meaning of fade to mean 'waning', or to go over, I pictured the arrangement each day and also the last one being this afternoon's view of Open Arms.

Having recovered, and feeling less frazzled on the Friday, yes we returned a day early, I removed the bucket flowers and was amazed that the tight buds had already opened, but it isn't surprising as the temperatures here were about 28C.

Still continuing with warm nights, the ones where one has a 0 tog duvet, which means we sleep under the duvet cover without any duvet in it. Here on day three, yesterday Sunday, the buds have open a little further but the colour has not been faded by this I mean bleached out by the strong sunlight.

And finally today,  a few petals are on the point of falling.  Though as it is clouded there is little effect of over bright light causing a bleaching effect on the eye of the lense. The colour does fade from the petals as the flowers wane, and tomorrow, this collection will go the same way as all the clippings made on Thursday.

With a little feed, and some watering in the absence of rain, the plant will bounce back, and reflower maybe two or three times further, and for all these reasons if a delightful plant to have in the garden.

I am sure there will be many beautiful flowers in the other arrangement, which us followers of Cathy enjoy sharing on Mondays. This is the link to her anchoring post, which is to be applauded after she and the golfer opened their garden yesterday. 

And finally our June Challenge for our online WI zoom photography group is 'Fill the Screen', and this cropped picture of Rosa Open Arms just fits the bill:

I just pray it rains at some time during the coming week. I hope it does......

P,S. The other picture I shall be submitting is this picture of some ginger biscuits I made this morning, for our WI Knit and Natter that met here earlier on, which is why I am little later than usual posting.