Wordless Wednesday - Flowers for a relaxed English wedding

Wordless Wednesday. A cup of cheer for a rainy day.

Wordless Wednesday: Muscari in waiting…

Pale, but otherwise unharmed, prisoners emerge from the cellar.

Even the gas man is giving me funny looks now.  He knocked on the door to do a meter reading this week, and was ushered down into the darkness of the cellar, with me on his heels carrying a watering can.  He looked rather nervous at the prospect.

As he checked how many billions of pounds we owe the gas company, I carefully tended my row of captives - hyacinth and crocus bulbs which are being forced to grow, against their seasonal inclinations, to flower in time (I hope) for Christmas.  The first planting of crocuses looked anaemically sprightly, with significant shoots poking sturdily out of the soil.  So, as they have decided to submit to my will and cooperate, I have granted them release from the darkness.  Added a bit of moss to the soil to hide their naked bits, and voila:

…they're ready for market on Saturday.  Now I'm wishing I'd planted more up. These will be white 'Ard Shenk' crocuses in the coming weeks. Rather pretty, don't you think?

Christmas bulbs: keeping them in the dark

I have imprisoned things in the dark dankness of my cellar today. Not something I did lightly.  Indeed, in order to achieve my objective I had to move the ironing board, the recycling, the camping table, the shopping bags and the vacuum cleaner and then remove the floor sections of my glory hole. (I'm sure the people who come to read the meter have palpitations and have flashbacks to Kathy Bates' film 'Misery' when I go through these procedures and usher them down the dark brick steps).

Today's victims, whose banishment will endure for about 8 weeks, were teacups full of crocus bulbs, and terracotta pots of hyacinths which I'm trying to force into flower around Christmas time.  I am going to put together a few teacup bulb kits for people to plant themselves, but feel that these are nicer sold ready growing, with a hope of flowers during the dark days of December/January rather than the recipient having to plant them up some time in the new year, with the resulting flowers appearing at the same time as the ones in the garden.  What do you think?

This spring's teacup planter crop in late March - a great success with customers.

In the garden, I've cleared spaces and put in lots of scented narcissus bulbs, muscari and leucojum aestivum. I've also laid waste to a couple of the viburnum bushes, which has generated new wish lists for things to put in the gaps.  Scented peonies from Kelways Nurseries are currently tempting me greatly, but they have such a short season for the space they take up.  Should probably be more practical about it, although they are soooooo beautiful and I love the idea of scent with those blousy blooms.

Still have all my tulips to plant, but will leave those until November to avoid the risk of the fungal disease, tulip fire.  At least the weather is turning colder now, which should kill off lurking bugs and beasties that munch.  It will also, sadly,  put paid to my cosmos and dahlias which are still flowering their hearts out.  In the greenhouse, however, I've got a nascent crop of cornflowers, ammi, marigolds and cerinthe which are all doing brilliantly from September sowings.  I've got so many cornflowers, that I'm even going to risk planting out a load after hardening them off to take pot luck in the great outdoors over winter.  If they don't make it, at least I won't have had to invest lots of watering time and compost on their upkeep over the next few months.

I didn't have a great deal of success with my anemones this year and the Twitterati of #britishflowers were all swooning over their tunnel grown crops of the same, so have today planted lots of black nuggety corms in my greenhouse border, to see if I have better luck with getting a decent crop of them in there.  I'm dreaming of future bunches as I tend all these bulbs and babies.

This year's anemone planting is 'The Bride' - a white variety. Hope I get these mad red ones reappearing too.

But back to the present:  I've got 100 wreath bases taking up valuable shelf space in my shed, lavender, statice and honesty suspended from anything vaguely suspenderable (including my light fittings where the ceiling is high enough) and bags full of cones waiting for the call to action.  It feels very odd to be thinking about Christmas this early, but need to start organising my plan of action for stall wares in November and December.   I've even got to organise a Christmas photoshoot for my china wares in order to generate some festive purchase spirit in my online shop!  I just hope my family will be in the mood for mince pies and german lebkuchen at some point in the next couple of weeks.

Flowers mustered, stall done and dusted.

Managed to wrangle enough plant material from the garden to populate my first stall of the season - a big relief.  Lots of planted teacups as well as ones with flowers arranged in them, a few cut off wine bottles with larger arrangements, willow wreaths and, of course, lots of magnolia.

Had lots of people cooing over the stall and found that there are plenty of other chinaholics lurking in the woodwork...none male, as my husband points out.  It was also funny to tab-hang on people's discussions about the stall as they walked by and I think it jumped out at them because it was so different to standard florist fare.  Lots of comments on the idea of teacups and china, and a lot of interest in the magnolia - have to say I was almost pleased to see the back of it, as I've spent the last three weeks changing the water in the buckets and lugging them in and out of the house to get them colder/warmer to stop/start them flowering as needed.  I seem to spend all day picking up the fuzzy casings the buds shed, or rescuing them from the cats who delight in pinging them around the wooden floors.

I was very pleasantly surprised that the topic of weddings came up several times  - as a novice at this game, was very flattered that my arrangements were so well received. Quite a few people took my card, so who knows....

The 4.30 wake up to get everything arranged and packed up for 8.00 am was a bit of a shocker and I'm quite knackered now, but it is good to get the first stall out of the way and I'll have a better idea of how to organise myself more effectively next time around.

Also got nobbled by a lady who is running a craft fair next weekend who wants me to take a stall. As the garden is really starting to go into lift off now, I think that another week should see me right in terms of plants - the tulips are colouring up, bluebells are starting to form their flower spikes and the honesty is almost ready to flower as well.  I'll just have to continue my daily march around the garden shouting at it all to grow!

The bonus of doing a flower stall is that the house looks gorgeous with the leftover plants - saves me having to organise myself to make more!