August bouquets
Slim pickings!
This heatwave and drought really sapped my stock this month. And my will to garden.
Add in a few Thursdays when I couldn’t get to the weekly market and you have a rather paltry offering.
I am still amazed I can get a few rose blooms even in the heat and parched climate.
They are not robust. And really it’s more of a petal fest and a bit of a pot pourri offering. Add in the agastache, the flowering marjoram, some viburnum greenery and tall uprights of the miscanthus and it’s still fetching.
These dahlia Sylvia are the only ones still going strong. I am even contemplating releasing some of the dahlias from their sunken pots to give them a better chance against drought. The Sylvias are growing directly in the soil at risk from being munched underground.
But we have too many mole rats to risk it. Despite the resident ‘mouser’ becoming an enthusiastic ‘mole ratter’.
I was going to show you evidence of her most recent gift two days ago… but she ate it.
This is her perch when she announces she has brought in a gift and you need to move fast.
It will be deposited under the dining table and played with for a few minutes. If you don’t react with alacrity and reward she will give up and just snack on the proferred delight.
And you can add in getting out the dustpan and brush for fallen petals and random rodent body parts at the same time.
My dried flowers are still producing beautifully. Thank goodness.
I have bunches galore drying in the racks above my office desk and in the garden room.
(I’m not going to show you a shot of the ones in the garden room. It needs a tidy. And I couldn’t get a shot without you seeing some ghastly pile of mess.)
Here’s how my friend Sarah presents her dried flowers at the market.
I must try and get some seeds of those pink lemoniums. Very subtle and pretty. Sarah is the queen of the pretties. Even her santolinas don’t look desiccated.
Aren’t her China Asters amazing?
Callistephus chinensis ‘Chrysantella, Cameo Pink, Mother of Pearl.
They look like sea anemones. I did grow one variety of China Asters one year.
But they thrive on constant fussing and watering.
And those are two things my cut flower garden lacks.
12th September 2024 @ 10:03 am
The rat taupier offering ceremony made me laugh… My cat never eats them, just deposits them overnight, preferably on an expensive Oriental rug with a dark pattern where I am likely to tread on them if I don’t look carefully. As for liberating your dahlias, there’s the wire cage possibility or perhaps risk one or two tubers with a protective barrier of daffodil bulbs. Snowdrops also seem to work as a repellent, and for your climate I would suggest Galanthus elwesii, or perhaps Leucojum – they look good in arrangements.