Well, mostly purple anyway. Everything is growing now, in spite of or because of the rain. Anemones are producing continually as I planted them gradually, and they obviously had no appeal to whatever ate the tulips. Dutch Iris are still brilliant. There are still some Freesias and Geranium Narcissus for scent, and perennial Stocks.
Poppies are out, and the Cineraria have been flowering for a while. I bought a mix and I love this almost white one.
My first few tulips are up, and I’m cherishing them as many of them have been eaten by the mysterious rodent or muscalid.
It was a mixed bag of a weekend, with a perfect sunny day, a frosty night, and then a rainy day followed by a misty morning. The flowers were picked in the rain, and photographed as picked – a great opportunity for photographing water droplets but a very drooping arrangement. Back at home I found a better vase for them and they are now all dry and standing up nicely.
Continue reading “In a Vase on Monday – a Mixed Bag of Weather and Flowers”
I have loved ‘citrus colours’ – lime green, orange, and lemon yellow since I was young, and as a student once went a whole year wearing lime green overalls with orange, red and pink underneath. For my vase today the first yellow daffodils contributed the lemon colour to the oranges, mandarins, and limes blown onto the ground after the storm on Friday.
This week I have so many scented flowers you would think it would be overpowering, but they blend together to make a perfume. We seem to run out of scented flowers at the end of Summer, and it’s a nice change when the cooler weather brings the scented bulbs and shrubs.
It was a dark morning; although it’s not technically the solstice for another 2 days, the day length in minutes is as short as it’s going to get, and it was cloudy.
There is a wealth of purple at the moment, in fact there is a wealth of flowers in general now, as the days lengthen quickly and the soil is still wet. I considered a completely royal purple vase, with hints of regal gold, but in the end I really wanted to use the lovely giant yellow ixias, and I absolutely love the little red and yellow columbine Aquilegia canadensis.
Continue reading “In a Vase on Monday – Ixia Giant Yellow with Columbines and Salvia”
Each month I’ve tried to photograph the most popular flowers for bees and bumble bees. Summer was a blur of growing and harvesting which is slowing now so I can post some of them.
Soldier poppies, California poppies and some of the later perennial poppies continued into December and later and were often full of bumble bees which blended so well and buried themselves so deep they often looked like part of the flower.
This week I started out with purple Columbine and Wallflowers. At the last minute I decided to add some orange to spark up the colour a little.
Absent Gardener 