July flower bouquets

Isn’t this one marvellous? It was a bouquet for my neighbours who needed something glam for a photo shoot.

And it was so fun to realise that I can now add some of the excellent dried flowers into an already extravagant bouquet to give some colour.

And one agapanthus. Unintended.

I had accidentally lopped it off while I was weeding. So too the tall leek flower. Also lopped as I heaved past one of the raised beds in the potager with a bucket of my friend Elodie’s very pungent kitchen scraps for the compost heap. It was so stinky I wasn’t watching where I was walking for fear of spilling the smelly reeking bucket all over me.

We all know how that sort of ‘scent’ can linger. In hot weather the compost bins / chook buckets will decompose rather fast. And her apartment in the next village has no outside space, so I’m relieved she can bring her veggie peelings over to me to ‘seed’ my rather dry heap.

I like to the think the reality of a cut flower garden and stinky compost can actually result in a bit of elegance to a rather ‘meadow’ flower display.

I look forward to seeing the pictures.

I could have done with offering a more elegant vase; but all the ones I had were drying.

Yes. I have been busy with a necessary indoor chore during the heat of the day.

And it’s a good use of the Farrow and Ball tester pots I do seem to collect. Yeabridge green, Calke green and Inchyra blue.

Oh and all the enamel flower buckets received a dose of paint to hide the rust patches on the insides.

It does make picking dahlias in the morning much more fun.

I expect the Creature to be more present in the Wednesday morning flower arranging task. (For ‘present’ read ‘utter pest’.). She has set up camp in the flower room just where I usually fill my vases and plonk the blooms.

But she is ailing with an eye infection and is rather wan right now.

Trying to get antibiotic eye drops into a semi wild cat….

Even I can’t channel my Inner Archie (veterinarian father who was a whizz with cats) and get more than a teensy amount in the affected eye.

She pulls away when I approach now. And we all know that you only get one shot before mistrust and distress outweigh affection and innocent delight at your presence.

Even after the delivery of a bowl full of croquettes.

So I let her snooze on while I arranged my flowers nearby and marvel at having a nice afternoon chore that doesn’t involve righting upended flower vases which have been attacked by a swishing Creature trying to get to the water to drink, the string to play with, the ornamental grasses to chew. The secateurs to tread on and not be reclaimed.

This bouquet with bupleurum, choiysia and night scented stock is for my new physiotherapist. Every Wednesday at 4pm for a while and aren’t I the lucky one? Rural life and finding a physio or osteopath within trekking distance… Hélène’s treatment rooms are a mere half hour’s drive away. (Albeit on a very winding and steep nasty road.)

It feels like all things are on the up this month.

Apart from a pus-eyed puss cat.