Roses

The first roses on the house wall have begun to bloom - and we are about to go on holiday. I haven't a clue what the rose is, it is a climber, single flowering, with a lovely clear fresh rosey scent.
I don't grow many roses here as they struggle in the rain and I don't have time to pander to plants that are struggling. I do grow some iceberg roses as they moved with me from our old house and, as they flower all season, they are useful for buttonholes and the like and I have rambling roses growing up the hawthorn trees on the boundary. Sometimes I will don gloves and climb up to cut swags of bloom for weddings.
I have been reading a very interesting weblog by Heather of Eie Flud perfumes (who comments on my posts and makes me feel that there is someone out there in the ether!) which is about the development of her new rose perfume. I do love getting the feel of the how specialists think through their subject, the nuances and vast range of possibilities they consider, where for me it would be a much blander one dimensional process.http://www.eiefludrose.blogspot.com
It was the same when we had the photographer Andrew Montgomery here for the Country Living article - I go outside, I find a likely looking flower, I point and press - he spent 2 days here, painstakingly lighting scenes, contorting me into the most flattering poses (feet, legs and hips to the side, body and shoulders to the front) and arranging the dining room chairs at just the right angle so they looked at their most chairlike! And of course the photos are fantastic and quite unlike the reality.
I shall be away for the next 2 weeks - so no posts - the van is open as usual and Sally shall be in charge. There will be people here but they are NOT flower people and I would NOT advise anyone to order bouquets from them!

Is it November already?

Yesterday's rain and wind were absolutely horrible - the lovely weather of last week had made me blase and I had forgotten how horrible it is to be out picking flowers in the pouring rain with the wind blowing everything out of the bucket as soon as I put it in.

Gusty winds at this time of year are much more damaging than those earlier in the season as there is so much more bulk in the garden - the wind was so bad here that it blew all the leaves off the courgette plants and has blown a row of lilies completely out of the ground!
For once I was glad of the bulky weeds which have taken over the beds nearest the polytunnel - these acted as a windbreak so the delphiniums and peonies stayed upright!
The photograph is of parsnip flower - my favourite foliage for this time of year. It is what you get if you leave parsnips in the ground and allow them to flower - fantastic sturdy lime green umbrels about 3 feet tall. It is a bit like angelica but without the overpowering celery type scent.

Snakeshead fritillary seeds

These handsome seedheads are from the snakeshead fritillaries - 18" tall in a maroony buff colour, I may yet use some of them in arrangements.
The others I will leave to ripen and sow the seeds - last year I left them to self sow and this year there were masses of babies but I think the ground will get overcrowded if I do that again so I shall sow them somewhere else. I am not sure how many years they take to get to flowering size.
There are a lot of seeds in each seedhead - they are flat discs and are stacked on top of each other in each of the lobes - and I shall have far too many for my own use. If anyone would like to have some let me know - I think that they ripen in July.
I am going to scarify a piece of damp grass to expose the soil and then sow some there in the hope of getting a meadow effect. I shall have to chose an area where the grass isn't too lush so that the babies stand a chance.

Buying and running a florists shop

Over the past few days my bedtime reading has been a newly published book on this subject by Alan Peck. It is interesting as it is written entirely from the point of view of financial bottom line, there is none of passion for flowers (or even, to be honest, an interest in them) that would tend to cloud most florists accounts. Peck and his wife Elizabeth owned 2 florist shops for 8 years until she died of cancer in 2004.
It has made me very glad that I work in the way that I do, that the flower business has developed from the need to grow things rather than the need to sell things. I am also so glad that I have my own flowers to draw on as much of the book is devoted to the need to pass off old stock to customers (as well as how to get them to add a helium balloon to their order!?) before it becomes wastage. I found that I was sad the weeks I sold out this year as there were no flowers to send to Crofatmie Nursery on the Monday.
Even worse is the compromises caused by his reliance on buying from the Dutch wholesalers.
Peck writes "When you purchase flowers from a wholesaler you do not know when they were cut. You do not know what sort of conditions they have been kept in since cutting. " Peck regards a £20 bunch of flowers as cheap (and frequently insinuates that it is insulting to the recipient!) - if I was spending £20 on flowers I would expect the vendor to know exactly when and where they were cut and how they had been treated since then.
The book is obviously aimed at would be florists and I suppose it is unlikely to be read by many flower buyers, - should they happen across it, however, they will become very cynical about flower shops.
One thing that I didn't know was the practice of relay selling - a company takes a flower order for say £40; it then passes it on as a £30 order to a local florist and it would then be the local florist who appears to be offering rubbish value for money while the relay company takes the profit. I was approached by a number of these firms as soon as I put my number into the Yellow Pages this year but felt that I wasn't enough of a conventional florist to be able to do remote orders - I like to know who is sending and who is receiving flowers and to make sure that the bouquet is going to suit. I like connection. It hadn't occured to me that it was a scam.

Blue for a boy

This bouquet of allium christophii, iris and paeony "Duchesse de Nemours" was to celebrate the arrival of a baby boy.
The allium open out into massive metallic blue-purple globes which will gradually dry and can be kept, the paeonies become very blousy scented flowers - the one in the bottom picture was in Drymen Royal Bank of Scotland last week - now it is on my dining room mantlepiece.

Flowers for 16th/17th June

I have just been walking round the garden deciding what I shall pick for tomorrow and marvelling at how the mood changes from week to week.
The flowers I have my eye on for tomorrow are all tall, ethereal and soft coloured. First up are foxgloves - a beautiful elegant flower that is little used as people think of it as growing everywhere and tend not to value it. I have some graceful apricot foxgloves - now apricot is not a colour I tend to use much but it suits the slight sway of the foxgloves perfectly.
The tallest of my grasses Stipa gigantea is also , ready to be cut - this creates an airiness to bouquets hanging above the rest of the flowers - it is also wonderful in a vase on its own with light shining through the individual flowers.
It is also the week for the largest of my alliums - largest in head that is, they are not the tallest - Allium christophii with large globes of metallic purple starshaped flowers. These dry in the vase and can be kept for ages. I often use them on dried Christmas wreaths.

Nature watching

Last night - about 10 o'clock - Euan and I were sitting on the bench against the back wall of the greenhouse watching the sun set and enjoying a glass of wine, when a hare lolloped along the main grass path and sat about 20 feet away from us munching the grass.
It knew we were there but ignored us, Jasmine knew it was there but ignored it (being too intent in mastering the new trick of balancing on top of a large roll of capillary matting which presently cluttering up the lawn). After ten minutes or so the hare headed off for a tour of the garden, carefully keeping to the paths, and then back into the field - half an hour later it was back for another tour - eating grass rather than flowers thankfully.
What a privilege.

Job satisfaction

One of the great things about this job is that people are generally pleased to see me - I am usually behind a beautiful bouquet and everybody seems to smile.
I vaguely remember that a couple of years ago an artist worked as a florist delivery man and put together an exhibition of photographs of people receiving the bouquets.
Another great thing is that, as I am a very small business, I tend to know my customers, and, as most of my work is repeat business, I get to know them through the birthdays, engagements, and special occasions of their lives. One chap first bought flowers from me for his girlfriend at Partick Farmers Market, since then he has sent flowers on the day they moved in together and now to celebrate their engagement. What a lucky woman.
The photograph is of Anchusa azurea "Dropmore" a short lived perennial/biennial which grows to about 3 feet tall with sprawly stems covered in these deep blue flowers. It is related to borage and has the same kind of prickly/hairy leaves. It would now be the time to sow it to flower next year.

Try again with tomatoes

Each year I try to grow tomatoes and each year I neglect them as some vital point and they all die. People often assume that I grow my flowers in the polytunnel but it would be a disaster if I did as I find keeping anything alive indoors very challenging - we don't have, for example, a single houseplant.
This year, however, it is all going to be different . . . . well actually that is not strictly true - the plants pictured above were bought from Gloagburn Farm Shop (fabulous cakes) just outside Perth, as I had already managed to kill off all my seedlings.
I have decided to grow the tomatoes using a technique called ring culture. The idea is that the plants have two types of root - feeding roots just below the surface, and drinking roots further down. By growing them in large plastic pots with the bases cut out I will be able to feed the top roots within the pot with liquid feed, and by watering the soil around the pot I will be able to give it plenty to drink without "diluting" the taste of the tomatoes. As I say, that is the theory. I have elaborated on it slightly by sinking upside down plastic bottles next to the pots - I cut the bases off to make them into funnels and can water directly into these and they will take the water right down into the soil.
The food for the tomatoes will be made from comfrey leaves - I grow a sterile form called bocking 14 - the plants are cut down and the leaves steeped in water until they decompose into a smelly and nutritious feed which is high in potash. I have also shredded some leaves and put them in the top of the pots as a mulch.
All of this SOUNDS great . . . . .hmmmm

Potting up

I shall be going away in a couple of weeks and, although there will be someone looking after things here, I am frantically trying to get seedlings into pots, and potted plants into the ground so that they will all be easier to look after and less likely to keep over in the heat and wind.
I have also been potting up some plants into aluminium planters - this is a pot of viola "green goddess", there are also planters of sedums and trailing dichodra (which has long trails of slightly felty silver leaves that go well with the metallic pots); a very chocolate scented chocolate cosmos called "chocamocha" and some scented leaf "attar of roses" pelargoniums (geraniums). All these planters will look good until the first frosts and will survive without constant watering - the violas, sedums and cosmos can be planted out in the garden at the end of the season, the pelargonium can come inside as a pot plant.
I intend to put up some white dahlias in planters as well but these will only be for those prepared to water pots every couple of days if it is sunny.

Pigeon visitor

This beautiful homing pigeon visited us yesterday - we gave it some chicken grain and a drink and after a few hours it headed off again.
Euan and Zoe were quite fancying adopting it but I don't think that Jasmine and the cats were quite so keen.
I wish that I had taken a note of its tag number so that I could find out whether it makes it home.

Market stalls

The sunny weather brought out the urge to barbeque so we put up the market stalls as a long shady table and invited friends round to watch the rugby. Men were in charge of the cooking (surprise, surprise) and as it was done after a large number of beers, it was more the company than the food that made it a great day. Put it this way, Jamie Oliver's salmon in a newspaper is not "easy" after you have had a few too many and the resulting sushi had to be finished off inside in the oven.
I have 4 of these market stalls and am more than happy to lend them out to charity fairs etc as long as people can transport them.

A happy surprise

Isn't it wonderful when something turns out to be much better than you thought it would be. In the autumn I bought a lot of plants from the now sadly closed Floreat Plants. I didn't know all the plants but Sue gave me such a good deal that I thought I would take a chance on them. Now many are beginning to flower.
This is an Oriental poppy called Manhattan - my preconceptions about the name made me think that it would be a bright red. Now all poppies are lovely, so any colours would be fine - but now it has flowered in this raspberry/purpley/moody colour which is gorgeous and goes with all the purple alliums and iris, and burgundy cirsiums and sanguisorbas that are also in the garden at the moment. Couldn't be better.
Definately one to propogate more from for next year!

Sweet peas and siculum

The flower I have had most questions about this year is Siculum, also known as Nectaroscordum bulgaricum, it is classed with alliums in bulb catalogues and flowers at the same time as Allium "Purple Sensation", with us this is last week in May, 1st week in June.
The flower is like a candelabra of hanging bell shaped flowers in those subtle sludgy pinks and olives that you also get in fritillaries. It grows on a sturdy wind resistant stem, about 80-100 cm tall. I have pictured the flower in amongst a froth of sweet rocket which is an excellent flower to mix with it in a vase - largely because, while it may look wonderfully architectural on its own it develops a strong oniony smell. This can be reduced by changing the water every day, or by putting a teaspoon of bleach into the vase. The other option is to mix it with something like the rocket which is sweetly scented. Sweet rocket's scent develops in the evening - I was picking buckets of it late last night after the heat had dropped - and the smell of cloves was intoxicating. We are intending to put a bench againstthe west facing wall of the greenhouse so that we can watch thesun set over the mountains. I think that I shall plant up the area either side with clouds of white sweet rocket.
The other photo is of a rapidly emptying bucket of sweet peas - taken just to celebrate being able to pick a whole bucket of them.

Minou - meow

Here is a photo of the newest addition to the menagerie - Minou - climbing on a pile of washing. She is now asleep, in danger of tumbling out of the laundry bin. Bix and Phoebe, our older cats, are staying clear of her with just the occasional growling grumble when she passes them - Jasmine, the miniature schnauzer, is terrified!

I am about to go out and do deliveries up to Aberfoyle - I think that I might take Jasmine with me.

Each week's subscription flowers seem to take on a different hue. This week they are blue and lilac with silver - the silver comes today from a very pretty grass Briza minima. At least I think that is what it is - one of the downsides to having a dog who loves to chew plastic is that labels have a tendancy to go missing (just after I had trained the children not to take labels out of pots!) so it is an unlabelled grass I sowed last year but which has only just come into flower. If it is Briza minima then all I can say that it isn't very "minima" at all - the stems are about 18" - and the seed heads unwrap themselves from their stem sheaf all crinkled like hair just undone from a plait and then push themselves outward as if suspended in air.

I love using grasses in flower arrangements - airy, floaty ones in particular - as they give a sense of movement, texture and lightness. Personally I like two different sorts of arrangement - a single type of mad flower massed together - a bunch of parrot tulips or bicolour dahlias for example - or a bunch that look like a herbaceous border with different heights, flowers, seedheads and grasses. Grasses also look wonderful on their own - that is how I like to use Stipa gigantea when I have a lot of it - cut full height and displayed in a large glass vase.

Sunshine slacker!

I can't believe that it is too hot to work! I made the mistake of putting on my own sunscreen yesterday - my arms are obviously shorter that I thought and I have lovely red stripe across my back.
Today I have been pootling about in full slacker mode - this morning I put in a few rows of seedlings into the beds that used to have tulips in them (the tulips move every year to help prevent fungal disease) and then did my local subscription deliveries stopping off to get my hair cut, and came home to lie in my new (birthday) hammock and read the paper.
My argument is that I'll start work again when it is cooler this evening . . . .but then again, our new kitten arrives tonight.
I am cooking pork chops for tea tonight - I mention this as the pork is quite the best I've ever tasted - it is from Peter and Liz Candy's farm/smallholding at Easter Ballat, Balfron Station. The animals are organically reared in very small numbers and then slaughtered locally. We had a whole shoulder when friends came round the other week and it was fantastic. It was such a large joint that I had expected to be living on cold roast pork for the rest of the week but everyone had third helpings and it did us Monday night!
You can contact the Candys on 01360 440 480.

Doorstops

This warm breezy weather reminds me that the last time we had nice weather I got lots of calls about doorstops to prop open all those banging doors. At the time I had sold out.
Aha! I thought, I'll make some for the Drymen show. Show cancelled due to rotten weather (no-one wants to prop their doors open any more.
So anyway I have a few doorstops now - unfortunately I can't remember who asked for them. Available at the van £16.00.

sun and sweet peas

With this hot weather the sweet peas have been romping away - the interesting thing is that the different colours have begun their flowering at different times - all the sweetpeas were sown at the same time but the "painted lady" plants have been blooming for 3 weeks, while the rest of the pinks began last week followed by the creams - most of the blues are still in tight bud.

The scent as you pass the sweet pea beds is swoony. I remember reading a Monty Don article somewhere where he talked about a sweet pea tunnel he had made. He had put different varieties of sweet pea along its length and felt that it was unsatisfactory as the different strengths of scent felt like passing in and out of a radio signal.
We don't have that problem here, partly I suspect as all of the different varieties I grow have a strong scent (is there any point to a sweet pea without scent?, the flowers a pretty but hardly show stopping), though some such as painted lady are stronger than others. The other factor is that we always have at least a breeze, more typically a wind, blowing up from the Glen. I moan about this in the winter when this blows over tripods and warps the hedges but in the summer it keeps the midges away and wafts sweet pea perfume all over the garden - who could ask for more?

chicken watering can

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and Euan - knowing that I am missing having the chickens milling about, now that they are confined to their run - got me this copper watering can. It must catch the essense of chicken, as a couple of times it has been left on the lawn and I have headed outside to chase it back into the run.
It came from a mail order catalogue specialising in all things chickeny - http://www.countyourchickens.co.uk - well worth a browse.

alliums and burgundy fringe tulips

The deep purple alliums "Purple Sensation" have been spectacular this year - here they are in a pretty mixed bunch with sweet rocket ( it is always nice to have something with a sweet scent in with alliums to prevent any oniony smells), cirsium and the latest of the tulips I grow, burgundy fringe. It is not really a burgundy at all and starts off apricot, developing into a deep rose - very pretty.

Vintage pots

My mother is an antique dealer and I grew up surrounded by boxes of beautiful old china and textiles. It is probably natural that I love things that have a bit of history and a patina to them - the first antique that I bought was a silver and glass powder bowl which had a massive dent in the lid as though someone had sat on it, I still have it and it is one of those proverbial things that I would try to save from a burning house.
I recently found these old metal pots - originally used to collect sap from birch trees - and have flattened out the rounded bases and added drainage holes to make them into flower pots. They have a fantastic patina - from decades of being outside. They are c. 8 by 9 cm. and would fit small plants - in the photo I have planted them up with the viola "green goddess" - they would also be great with herbs. I have them for sale at the van both planted up and empty.