In a Vase

Mondays seem to fly by and its not until later in the week, that I feel able to go into the garden and be inspired to cut some flowers.  Maybe it is because it is late in the flower cutting season, and this year I have not planted autumn flowering plants.  Tucked in a corner amongst my potted ferns, is a graceful grass: Hakonechloa Macra albostriata, growing in a blue ceramic pot.  We had seen this grass planted to great effect in the Birmingham Botanical Gardens last week.  I had first been introduced to this plant by a member of our gardening club.

After wheeling my bicycle back to the shed, I spotted some lovely berries on a self seeded Hypericum.  I had one in a pot several years ago, got rid of it, regretted that, and then several sprouted around the garden...That plant has rather insignificant flowers, but lovely berries, which start green, then get a red tinge, and finally turn a glossy black.

I've been sorting through my vases, and came across this soap stone vase given to me by my mother many years ago, but sadly it started leaking and I realised that the two elements were stuck together and not water tight.

I had tied the material with some raffia, and decided that the ends were worth bringing up and having a little peep...but now a different vase was required.  I had cut some other material, but felt that the arrangement was just ending up like one of those pots of stew, where you have thrown everything in where there is no distinct flavour!

The little elephant is a reminder that this weekend my dear friend Jayne and I spent a wonderful day together.  Jayne loves elephants.....

In a Vase on Monday - WI flowers

Wednesday last week was a milestone in the WI.  Last Wednesday was our 100th Birthday, and the day of our monthly meeting.  I only just 'remembered' about half an hour before  leaving for our meeting, that we had agreed to 'dress up', and take a nice tea cup, saucer and plate!  What prompted me?  Hubby was watching the early evening news and I heard some local article in the distance.  I made the 'dressing up', gathered our everyday white Wedgewood China, and the little vase full of flowers for the Chairman's table.

Isn't that a lovely tradition?  Each month we have volunteers who make up a bouquet for the table, and also a posy for each person who has a birthday.  Sometimes one person volunteers to make both, or either the table flowers or the birthday posies.  I had agreed to step in to help out someone who was on the rota for the table flowers, but who could not make the meeting.  She was at Denman doing 'goldwork'.  I think Kay must have been on every Goldwork course since the year dot!  This was what I managed to pick quickly from the garden last Wednesday.

Of course there has to be two sides, so that the members have a nice view as well as the Chairman.

In this little Caithness Vase were leaves from Carex comans Bronze Form, which grows so well in the garden, and I usually have lots of little seedlings to give away, some lovely marjoram seed heads, some late flowering Lavender, the three asters as below, Coreopsis Sunfire, Rudbekia Goldstrum, Lysunachia clethroides also known as Gooseneck Loosestrife.  I had dead headed this a few weeks ago and it is paying me off with more blooms, and lastly a little spring of golden leaved Feverfew.

Our speaker cancelled at short notice and Victoria who has master minded and runs the Tree House Bookshop in Kenilworth, stepped in to give us an excellent talk on Vermeer, and the way he portrayed Women in the domestic sphere.  Dr Meir is a specialist in Art History of this period, but also a well loved and respected 'local'.  By the way a lovely yellow silk jacket/blouse the colour of the rudbekia turns up in several of Vermeer's paintings!

But this is In a Vase on Monday, so here is today's bouquet.

Picked again, as last week, in the pouring rain, I am happy with this medium sized arrangement.  The Vase is a rectangular one, which I picked up from an artist at the Cotswold Show in Cirencester back in the 1990's.  The shape was quite unusual then, but now it is everywhere.  There is a nice design etched on it, so even when empty is usually stays out somewhere.  Yes I can say this is still a WI arrangement.  The reason is that I ought to have brought one of the birthday posies home to give the following day to Pat who lives just round the corner from me.  She was out for the day to visit Lincoln, so I slipped the mag through her door, with a promise of a posy from the garden this week, when we got back from our weekend away.  As she called me back to say thank you and was particularly complementary about my flowers, I thought maybe this bouquet would do.

The pink feathers from the flamingos at Coton manor have a similar colour to the dahlias, which came to me as a rooted cutting earlier this year from the gardening club.  With some raindrops still on the petals of the daisies: Aster frikartii Monch, King George, and the smaller flowered one from my friend Penny.

 The pink sedum, I believe is Autumn Joy, and some stems of Rhamnus alaternus argenteovariegata complete the arrangement. Once I have finished this post, I shall take the arrangement round to Pat's.

Cathy is making sure that we think about the warm and sunny days this month with her arrangement, so as an antidote to this pink and mauve arrangement do go and enjoy hers, and see what other Vase on a Monday contributors are posting.

In a Vase on Monday - Not putting the Dormouse into the teapot

A few weeks ago, I believe someone posting In a Vase on Monday mentioned the 150th anniversary of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, so please if your read this, please 'admit' to starting me along this road.

This is an old book, a little wormy, which has my father's name written in the front and which I remember reading from when I was a little girl.  It has travelled across oceans and back again.  I love the old plates and think this is a 1930's edition.

Instead of putting the dormouse into the teapot, I am putting flowers in the sugar basin!  This is a little pewter teapot, sugar basin, and milk jug trio.  I had to rush Mr S to get it down from the loft, get it polished, and madly go into the garden in the rain to pick the blooms!

Flowers this week are Blue and White, I always used to see Alice as wearing a Blue Dress and white pinny, even in the black and white pictures, so White Centaurea,

Blue Aster frikartii Monch

White Agapanthus

and a little of my new clover

Trifolium repens Dragon's Blood

I have liked Pewter for some time now, I even prefer it to silver!  For many years I had wondered if I could use it as I thought it contained lead..but what a wonderful thing the internet is:

This what the Pewter society says:

Towards the end of the 18th century a new alloy called Britannia metal was discovered which could be used for large scale manufacture of teapots, tankards and the like through its ability to be rolled pressed and worked on wooden formers and cold stamped. Up to then pewter had been cast in expensive moulds. This change in tooling with Britannia metal gave resurgence to the industry and new centres were created in Sheffield and Birmingham.

As Britannia metal is an alloy of tin, antimony and copper there are no restrictions on its use for drinking. All pewter of modern manufacture meets the same standard.

I had thought that I may be poisoning myself if I used this, and would end up as Mad as the Hatter though his poisoning would have been from mercury.  If sometimes I am a little mad, a little skittish, it's not on account of having a tea caddy made of pewter!

Cathy has gone all red this week, so please go and visit our hostesse's  site.

Early May Posy

How nice to get back from a couple of weeks away, to step into the garden, and see how spring has sprung.  A little posy of Spring flowers...

A couple of prunnings of the Mrytle Luma Apiculata, with its pretty cream edged leaves, a few stems of Tiarella Spring Symphony,

which is flowering beautifully in a shady border, and across the path Dicentra Eximia also known as Fringed Bleeding Heart is also doing well.  It has lovely ferny leaves and grows wild in North America.

This year the Epimediam Grandiflorum Lilafee which also has a lovely 'common' name of Lilac Fairy Barrenwort, is flowering, and deserves to have me kneel down to look into into pretty small flowers.  If there are fairies in my garden, at the moment they would be looking after this one very carefully.

At the front some daisies bought with my grand daughter earlier in the year and a large Heuchera Leaf.  In a couple of months time we are having a new category at our gardening club: a small arrangement.  What I would improve on this one, is to have leaves that are in proportion to the flowers, and instead of the Heuchera leaf, find some smaller ones.

The Fothergilla Gardenii Blue Mist, is a little too precious and too small to cut a few stems, but next year maybe!

Just smelling the roses

Its nearly the end of October, its dark when hubby arrives home from work, so I pick the roses to scent our home.  I am also so pleased that the squirrel is eating things other than my rose buds!

Today a big bunch again of Etoile de Hollande

 And a few Grace stems.  I see picking roses at this stage as dead heading three days early.

Late Summer Garden

 We've been sitting in the Gazebo at the end of garden, with cool drinks.  Under the large conifer it is about the coolest place there is.  In a pot theHydrangea Paniculata Vanille Fraise has excelled itself.  I think I shall have to put in some stakes to help take the weight of the large inflorescences.

I bought this plant about three years ago.  I do keep some plants in pots, planting them into larger pots each year, and moving  them around the garden.

Up against the conservatory this Clematis Viticella Purpurea Plena..the name says it all:  purple full flowered clematis is the best it has even been.  Each morning this week, as we breakfast, I have watched a large & fat light brown slug slither on the glass or eat round a leaf just close.  This morning, we were a little later, or maybe it knew I would be out with my slug catcher hat on!  And each day the squirrel manages to enter the net and get more pears!

The little chilli plant found it just too hot, so it is now on the table in the shade.

It was the leaves which attracted me to this Stachys 'Sharan Pink', and now it is looking really pretty in flower.  I think this will one which I shall try to propagate.

Close by another pink flower is flourishing in the heat: Achillea Lilac Beauty.  Again I bought just one plant last year, but will be sure to divide this up and have more repeats throughout the border.

One plant which I have had for many years, and which I think is so very useful as it can be planted at the front of the border, with pretty leaves from early spring, and now at this time sturdy but still delicate flower spikes, and later the seed heads covered with frosts seem to glow in low winter light.  Although Astilbes generally prefer damp conditions, here they are getting a good baking.  But we do have a heavy clay soil.  This dwarf chinese astilbe:  Astilbe Chinensis Pumila is one that I get down to admire...and cut to use with a mixture of other flowers and foliage for my posies indoors.

Another plant which ought to be in the soil, but which I potted up into a larger pot a few weeks ago, is doing well:  Leycesteria Formosa Golden Lantern.  I used to have a good clump of the green one in our last garden, and our bantums used to love the berries and Jet use to manage to fly up and bring branches down, whilst the plumper bantams used to peck at the berries.  They used to do this with the grapes too!  This and several other shrubs including Gerturde Jekyll has been used by leaf cutting bees.  A couple of weeks ago I watched a bee flying with a large piece, but did not manage to find where it went to!

The agapanthus, well the blue one is flowering, and the white one is still in tight bud

and under the purple acer I found the first of the cyclamen poking up, quite early this year...maybe some will be falling down the large cracks!

I normally keep my geraniums in pots, but this year put a few into the border.  My camera seems to cry shy of showing just how vivid these blooms are..I'm not sure of the name, which I have lost, of this one which I bought as a cutting a couple of years ago from one of the many 'Open Gardens' which we visit.

Bringing this picture up reminds of some of the plants which I shall be getting rid of, because they just do not perform and one of them is the day lily behind the geranium..it has never flowered in its three years there, and another on still with full sun, which is too much beloved of slugs!

This week's posy