Stylish Blogger Award

A big thank you to Elly.

http://www.ellystuin.com/

Who awarded me with a stylish blogger award, and made my day.

Planting by candle light (well, sort of)

I came home from work last night very excited to discover I had received a delivery of bare root plants and bulbs. Now any normal person would wait till daylight to start planting, however, realising that they would have to sit and sweat in their little plastic bags for a week until I had a day to get outside, I set about rigging up lighting in the polytunnel!

Some might say crazy, I like to say enthusiastic!

Ahh a lovely gin & tonic for Valentine's Day!!

I am sitting back and relaxing with a lovely gin and tonic after a busy day getting ready for Valentine's day in the shop.  We've prepared lots of orders ready for delivery tomorrow; made as much as we could until we ran out of stock, ready for an early morning start with a fresh delivery of flowers and foliage.

In other news, I have been rather chuffed with my new ebay purchase. I am just slightly obsessed with vintage china and glass and this week I purchased a beautiful large wash jug in cream, with a pretty green rose print.

 So this week's creation for my local pub, the Nevill Crest and Gun was created in my new purchase.
(Not a great picture i'm afraid, it was a grey, dreary morning before I delivered it.)

Natural flowers in a vintage jug, perfect for a country pub, come summer they will be home grown, even better!

Happy Valentine's Day everybody.

Dreaming of summer

 It looks as if we are all dreaming of summer in blog world. Sarah over at Modern Country Style is having an English garden party and I want in. We had the best English garden party last summer in the form of our wedding. A lot of hard work went in to the preparations for the big day but we were all thrilled with the final results and we had an amazing day.

And finally the productive part of the garden where I had all the sweet peas growing ready for the big day.

It's still winter but today felt like spring.

Today has been a beautiful clear and sunny day, perfect for getting into the garden to get a few jobs done.  I sowed the next batch of sweet pea seeds, checked over ranunculus and anemones which are sprouting strongly (apart from a few mouldy anemones that smelt pretty rotten!), and watered some poppy seedlings which I had neglected and had gone a bit limp. 

The day culminated with an evening bonfire just as the sun was setting behind the trees.  A day well spent, and now we can sit back and enjoy a glass or two of wine while dinner cooks.

Valentine's Day looming

So the countdown is here, only 2 weeks to go. On a personal level, nothing is obviously ready in the garden to do any bunches to sell, but in The Flower House, where I work, madness will kick in.
So ladies ( and men!) what is your preference, roses or spring flowers?

Personally, spring always wins hands down at Valentine's (come summer, with scented garden roses, well that's another matter!).

Wedding portfolio

Here is a sneaky peak at my new wedding portfolio that I had printed into a proper bound book, I was rather pleased with the end result.

Just think what exciting pictures I will now be able to take with our new camera!

Save the roses!

Thankfully it looks as if we are going to have a break in the never ending rain! The cutting area of the garden (in fact most areas of the garden) are looking more like lakes than lawn.

Not the most exciting picture, I know, but this is what I am having to deal with at the moment. So on to Plan B, move the roses to less boggy areas and use these raised beds for annuals. I'm hoping that by the time my scabious, dill, larkspur etc are ready to be planted out, this area will have dried out. Fingers crossed.

Longing for spring ( & summer!)

I had my first day of the year gardening in the sunshine at the weekend and got a taste for what's to come.
It's still a long way off, but it is lovely to think that these

will be racing up the trellises come summer and looking more like this

I must learn to be patient!

Happy New Year

It looks as if I have already broken my New Years resolutions, as it is the 5th Jan and I'm only just writing the first blog of the year. So much for posting more blogs in 2011!!
Anyway, I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and New Year. We had a well deserved break after a very busy build up to Christmas.

The last of the christmas arrangements managed to be either collected or delivered, the Pantiles market had a second hit of snow the week before Christmas, but customers would not be beaten by the weather and walked in to town instead.

So we are now looking ahead to the new season, tidying the garden, tending to annual seedlings and sweet peas, which the mice have also tried to tend to! And planning other cut flowers and herbs that can be grown.

Roll on spring!