A great team

Yesterday was one of those days where everything seemed to go wrong. It was the day when EVERYBODY wanted their door ring delivered and we had wedding bouquets and buttonholes to deliver to the youth hostel at Balloch. It was all things that had to be done at the last minute with a deadline.

To begin with the wedding bouquets just weren't going right - they refused to look like they were a part of the ivy frame, they somehow weren't at all like the prototype. We solved the problem by individually wiring all the flowers which gave the bouquets an airiness that had been lacking but this added a couple of hours onto our estimated time. Thank you to Sally for keeping calm and to Euan for supplying coffee and keeping the children out of the way.

Then we suddenly ran out of foliage. The pile of greenery still looked large but there was something wrong with all of it when examined closely - black marks on the ivy leaves, slug holes or general grot. It was 2.30, and there was about an hour of proper daylight left, so we took to the phones - Sally has a lot of good friends with established gardens, Euan collected our Chiristmas tree and a bootfull of very lovely fir trimmings from the Duffs in Buchlyvie and I found a neighbour with an overgrown garden wall who was happy to have it trimmed. By 4.00 we were back in business and I was so glad to have unflappable resourseful people working/living with me.

By midnight most people had their door rings and we had a car load of things to sell at Callander Farmers Market.

Thank you to the Halls, the Duffs, and Sally's many gardening friends.

Back at the Farmers Markets

Today I was at Glasgow Farmers Market in Mansfield Place in Partick. It was the first time in 2 years. I had a great time and had forgotten how much I enjoyed selling at Farmers Markets.

To be honest all week I have been dreading the day.

Two years ago I was diagnosed with Addisons disease - basically my brain doesn't manufacture steroids - and though it is easily treated I had about six months of illness before doctors found out what the problem was. During these six months I was selling at the farmers markets - dragging myself there and really struggling with keeping going. Somehow I had associated the markets with the exhaustion - today has dispelled that - I really loved it - there is a chance to speak to customers, the day was cold and bright, I saw lots of people who recognised me from 2 years ago.

I shall definately be going back in a fortnight!

I am particularly pleased as we sold out of potted bulbs - a good omen I think for the pots of forced bulbs I intend to sell in the spring.

Making those wreaths with Baldernock Garden club

The appalling camera shake on these photos makes it look as if we were running a speed wreath making competition.
In fact the evening was very jolly and relaxed - I showed everyone how I make a door-ring and then they had a go, with Sally and I helping anyone who got stuck. The results were very impressive and all quite different. I think that everyone was pleased with their creations.
I remembered half way through the evening that I have previously agreed to the club visiting us here in June - better get weeding.

The last proper Christmas Fair

This weekend saw the last of the Christmas Fairs as such - I still have my open day and several farmers' markets - but the Green Gallery @ Home was a lovely way to end the Fair season. Everyone had beautiful stalls - above are photos of Primrose Hill Interiors and Luckycats soaps - and there were also lots of beautiful paintings on the walls and a great relaxed atmosphere. Becky Walker was a great host, Ailsa kept everything moving smoothly, and the days went really well. I am looking forward to future exhibitions - the present one runs until Christmas and is open a couple of days a week.


The hit of the Fair were Luckycats' enormous cube candles scented with lovely subtle fragrances - their snazzy blue boxes arrived just in time and they flew off the stall. Laura assures me that she is making up another batch this week - I am after a couple for my more discerning friends - she can be contacted on 01877-389-126.

I used the Fair to try out a new stall arrangement with a beautiful black and grey Roma material as my stall cloth instead of the usual rustic linen - it completely changed the feel and looked really voluptuous. It helped that it went well with the black mantlepiece in Becky's dining room. I am getting in some practice for deciding what to do with my stall at the Country Living Scottish Fair in the Spring.

Moss

Sally and I have spent this afternoon wiring sphagnum moss onto copper wreath rings - a bit of a soggy job which leaves you with wrinkly fingers. Sally suggested that I should be telling people about the moss on the wreaths, the issues that I considered when chosing it, and why it differs from other florist's moss.

I did blog about this subject last year but as that is buried 200 entries ago it is probably worth revisiting.

Moss is a great problem for florists - when the general public want some moss, they head out into the garden or wood, pull some up and use that - while this may be fine for individuals it is not at all sustainable on a large scale. Some irreputable florists do take moss from the wild - and every year there are media stories about the denuding of national parks - but most buy it in. It is very difficult to find out exactly where the moss comes from - my local florist supplier could not tell me.

The best form of moss for creating good wreath bases is sphagnum moss - it has nice long strands which make it easy to bind, and it has a good water retention which keeps the greenery fresh - this would be great except that it takes ages and ages to grow and in the UK is a finite resource a bit like peat.

Which is why . . .I buy my moss from New Zealand . . . which seems daft . . . but is because it is the only place where sphagnum moss grows so well that it can be grown as a crop in specially designated reserves managed by the New Zealand government . . .and it is transported dried by boat . . . .so it is a lot more environmentally friendly than kiwi fruit. . . .

But it is still a compromise and I wish that some of my experiments with old felt underlay or sheep's wool (it was discarded as it stank of wet sheep ) had been successful.

Thinking about how to do it . . .backwards and in front of people

Driving back from the Ashfield Christmas Fair today I have been pondering how

I can explain how I make my Christmas wreaths.

Back in the Spring I had a stall at Baldernock Garden Club's plant sale and was asked if I would come back before Christmas and do a wreath making demonstation - they were such lovely people and the sale had had such a great atmosphere that I found myself saying yes without actually thinking about how I would do it.

Now that the demonstration is about a week away I am having to think hard!

The fashion at the moment (if you believe home type magazines) is for door wreaths made with a ring of oasis as their base, you stick foliage into the wet oasis and then add in bits and pieces, cinnamon on wire or flowers. It is very quick and easy and everyflorist from Jane Packer for Debenhams to Moyses Stephens seems to have a rose version.

I use the very same handy oasis rings for table decorations with a hurricane vase and candles in the middle - what I don't understand is how they are using them vertically. The problem is that as a stem ages it shrinks - it becomes smaller than the hole in the oasis and it will fall out. This can be an issue with pew-end decorations made too far in advance which shed their flowers as people walk past. The other thing about oasis foam is that it can easily snap if there is any weight on it . . . sometimes I think that magazine flowers are only meant to last as long as the photoshoot.

The wreaths that we make are very traditional. They are based on a mossed ring which allows us to wire all the foliage and fruit right through. To give the whole thing stability we bind the mossed ring with wire and flexible birch twigs, then add in a layer of greenery and finally the fruit, cinnamon sticks, chillis, whatever. The back is then pinned with plastic and a burlap backing.

I have made a lot of these wreaths over the past few years, but never with an audience and never with the pressure of being reasonably tidy.

Sally is going to be coming along to the Baldernock Garden Club with me so I expect that I shall be relying a lot on her talent for organisation and her tact.

Why I am not a magazine stylist . . .

The Dumpling Times - local newspaper of Gartocharn Village - has offered to put in a bit about my Christmas opening hours if I can supply a festive photo.

This is a very kind offer and of course I am very pleased to take it up.

It is always on occasions like this that it becomes very very obvious that I am not a natural stylist or photographer. Photos like these, that are perfectly good enough for the blog, become suddenly very flawed when I think about newsprint. It suddenly becomes obvious that the van is squint and that 3 seedtrays would be better than 2, and that you can see the pylons in the background . . .

When we had the photographer here from Country Living Magazine he was very good at all those sort of things (which is partly why the photos in the finished article don't really look like here at all) - knowing how to position a chair at a table so that it looks like a chair in a photo, framing things so that the weeds and electricity lines don't intrude, and getting me to stand twisted so that I look slimmer in the finished magazine. It did however take 2 days and a lot of swearing to get the photographs.

It has now started to rain, I am not going back outside to get straight photographs so I shall have to hope that either photoshop has a straightening button or that the good people of Gartocharn are slightly off centre.

The first proper Christmas wreath

The Green Gallery @ Home has its first exhibition opening tomorrow - the first since they have moved to Buchlyvie that is - and Becky asked me to do a door ring for the front door - she had chosen one of the sage rings for her back door and wanted something with a lot of red in it for the front. It is a lovely substantial Victorian house so I thought that it could take something big.

We used fruiting ivy as a base with masses of chillis, apples, holly berries and a wide red organza ribbon.

I am taking a slightly smaller version of this to Lomond School in Helensburgh this evening. The school is opening its new art facilities and I am showing off my decorations.