Pretty October

 I think October is my favourite month. Everywhere you go there is fresh growth, new flowers, and the beautiful softness of spring. Driving around town is a pleasure and you can almost forget the road works by concentrating on the shrubs lining roads and overhanging fences. Blossoms, magnolias, rhododendrons, clematis, camellias and numerous others. Such a pretty time.

 My clematis is in full swing. It was hanging quite untidily but I held off pruning it knowing the flowers would soon arrive. And here they are, fondant pink and sugar scented. They'll only last a week or two more and then I'll cut the bush back. 

 Another fleeting sight is my pink rhododendron. It's so eye catching when it's in bloom - I love glimpsing it out of the windows. I wish it lasted longer than a few weeks.

 Blackbirds are enjoying the blossom in the cherry tree. This one was keeping an eye on me as I weeded the garden. He just wanted me to lay some mulch so he could have a good dig through it.

We've been having classic spring weather - warm and sunny one minute, thunder and rain the next. I love watching the sky change.

Gumboots are a neccessity!

Evening light is dramatic when shining through new leaves. I love daylight saving time - it just feels so right. 

Ranunculus

For the past month I've been excitedly waiting for my ranunculus flowers to bloom. The buds are swelling and the petals are colouring. It's all the more exciting because in autumn I put in a pack of pastel ranunculus bulbs, which I've never seen flower before. What will they be like?

 Finally, one opened enough to tell. It seems to be a reddish pink shot through with yellow. Interesting!

 But on the plant next door, heartbreak as I discover that something has been in and eaten all the petals away! It's just an empty green cage. I don't even know what colour it was going to be.

 I picked the first pastel bloom and a couple of brights and tried out another recipe from the Flower Recipe Book. It was meant to be made with poppies and roses and ranunculus but I had to substitute the first two. I had jasmine buds to use though. And I substituted freesias for lilies. It smells lovely!

Here's the inspiration pic. I'll try it again in a few months, when my itty bitty poppy seedlings have some blooms!

On my reading table: The Flower Recipe Book

The Flower Recipe Book by Alethea Harampolis and Jill Rizzo

I love flower arranging. It's one of those little things that just makes me really happy, and I'm always looking for more ideas and inspiration for creating seasonal, natural looking arrangements. When I came across this book in a shop recently I couldn't let it go. There was just no way it was not coming home with me! Have a look at these pictures and you'll see why.

The book is arranged alphabetically by flower type. Each flower type has at least two 'recipes', some simple and some elaborate. The recipes start with an ingredient list, which tells you what flowers are required and how many stems of each, and a recommended vessel. Most recipes are illustrated with step by step photo instructions, which tell you exactly what to add and in what order. This is what is so great for me, as I often have problems with my arrangements flopping. Is it because I don't have enough stems or because I'm adding things in the wrong order? I think that once I've practised with a few of these recipes I'll have a better idea.

The big, beautiful photos throughout are eye candy in themselves. And I really like that most of the flowers and foliage used in the book are ones that are easily grown at home, so I already have a lot of them in my garden. (Except snowberries... which are now on the top of my list for next time I want to buy a shrub to plant.)

Here's my first arrangement based on one of the hellebore recipes (see photo below). I had to substitute a few things - I didn't have any mock orange, so I used stems of wintersweet with its fresh new spring leaves, and some white primulas. And I didn't have tulips so I used hellebores in a different colour. Oh, and the first ranunculus of the season had to be celebrated, so I slipped that in there too! I'm really happy with this one. It's not a carbon copy (and not meant to be) but helped me to arrange in a way I normally wouldn't, and most importantly, nothing flopped!

Spring snapshots

A few snapshots to remember what spring is like. Fresh green leaves unfolding, blossoms and buds. The grass is lush and pure green - not dry, brown and speckled with dandelions as it will be later in the summer. The garden beds are looking fuller and the bare patches are diminishing. I'm enjoying the architectural quality of the shrubs and trees before they are fully clothed and hidden again. 

Hope you're having some happy promising days in your garden this September.

September flowers

Spring is here, and with it lots of pink and pastel flowers for the garden and my vase. Looking around I have blossom on the peach and almond trees, the last of the daffodils and hellebores and the very first ranunculus! I've been filling my vases with more excitement than usual because I have a new book that's inspiring me greatly - more on that in another post. How's your garden blooming this spring/autumn? Are you growing any flowers for picking?

Middle image: hyacinths in vase. Outer images, clockwise from top left: sculptural hellebore forming seed pods, armeria, earlycheer daffodil, peach blossom, unknown but pretty daffodil, Pink Lady hellebore, red tulip, violas, the first ranunculus of the season, almond blossom, another sculptural hellebore, hyacinth blossom.

Linking up to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day at May Dreams Gardens.

Ipheion Uniflorum

 In my last post I mentioned my blue star flowers, and how I didn't know the correct name for them. Thanks to Lyn I now know that they are called Ipheion Uniflorum, and after a bit of googling I also know that the common names are spring star or spring starflower. So, I wasn't too far wrong with calling them blue star flowers... and I'll probably continue to do just that!

They make a lovely display with other spring flowers on a gently tarnished silver platter. How do you like to display spring blooms? I always enjoy pulling out my little glass bottles at this time of year.

And, since everything else in this photo is thrifted, I'm linking up to Op Shop Showoff at Blackbird Has Spoken.

I call spring!

 It seems too good to be true for the latter half of August, but I have to call it: spring is here! We've had ridiculously warm temperatures, and blooms and bulbs and blossoms are popping out all over the place. My heart lights up when I pull into my driveway and see the gorgeous frilly pastel confection spilling out of the garden here. It's ridiculously girly and over the top, and when the camellias have a bit more growth on them it will be even pinker!

 There are a mixture of early daffodils here along with these blue star flowers that I'm never sure of the correct name for. The foliage has a very pungent smell when brushed against but the flowers are pretty enough to make up for it.

 There are also some pink hyacinths in here but I might shift them as they are being buried in all the foliage.

 Elsewhere, I have more daffodils and some blossoms on the almond tree. Not very many this year on either of the trees, I'm not sure why that would be. Maybe they're giving themselves a year off like the apples do sometimes.

 The strawberries hardly take any time off though and here is Pink Temptation ripening the first berry of the season! I'm looking forward to fresh berries in my breakfast again.

A cold snap is in the forecast for later this week. Hopefully it doesn't last long, I'd hate it if we've had all the good spring weather already! But right now, the warm air is making me happy.

This post is in memory of Granny Cosgrove, an amazing lady who will be sadly missed.

Project Life - May

Here are my two May spreads in my Project Life album. I like to lay out the pictures so that the colours harmonise as much as possible in the spread, rather than enforcing a rigid chronological order. In the first spread I felt that a unifying element was needed, so I added turquoise corners to some of the photos. This creates a flow to the whole spread. In the second spread everything went together pretty well. I just picked out some of the colours to accent with patterned paper, added a dash of journalling and some simple cut paper decorations, and a crochet motif. I seem to be running at a steady rate of about 2 months behind with this album, but that's okay. It's not a project that needs to be rushed.

August flowers

I've got plenty of late winter flowers to show you this month. Over the past couple of years I've worked on building up my winter garden by planting hellebores, camellias and daphne, and every year I add a few bulbs. The shrubs are a year more mature and this, combined with an unusually warm July and start of August, has meant that there is plenty of colour and interest in the garden. And scent! Daphnes, potted cyclamen and earlycheer daffodils mean that I can perfume every room.

Today the weather was balmy and if I hadn't been at work I would have been able to capture even more blooms opening in the garden. Driving home I noticed blossom trees, magnolias and bulbs galore. I'm not kidding myself that winter is over, but it's on its way!

I'm linking up to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day at May Dreams Gardens.

Fresh is best

Well, winter is nearly over (she says optimistically) and it hasn't really been too bad - pretty mild really. We had a wet start to it in June though and I got out of the habit of picking fresh lettuce for my lunchtime sandwich, and it was too wet and dark when I got home at night to pick fresh things to cook tea with. So without my regular vitamin and mineral fix from the garden, I got sick. I was sick for most of July - one cold after another, which totally slammed me by the end of it. When I could stand again I dragged my sniffly ass out into the garden and picked all the fresh things I could find - mostly silver beet, but I also found a lovely purple broccoli head, some spring onions and some herbs. These were turned into various dishes including stir fry and a self crusting quiche, and I've been making sure to pick a few lettuce leaves when I make my lunch in the mornings. They may be slightly tough and a little bitter, but they are better than the sad supermarket lettuces any day! And I'm happy to say I've finally fought off the bugs and am keeping them at bay.

July was unusually warm, sadly I didn't make the most of it although I have managed to pick a lot of flowers. It's starting to feel like spring will be here soon so I need to get on with some tidying-up kind of jobs - I have done some weeding and mulching, hooray - before it's seed sowing time. In fact, I should really sow some lettuces this weekend.

How are things in your garden? Any tips on keeping the winter bugs away?