Wordless Wednesday: Windfalls?

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In a Vase on Monday: Daisies and an Infiltrator

Seed-sown Rudbeckia ‘Prairie Glow’ is joined in today’s vase by Anthemis tinctora ‘Kelwayi’, Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’, a couple of struggling stems of Calendula ‘Orange Prince’ and an infiltrator, an unidentifiable bright orange crocosmia which has no label because I thought I had removed all of it.

Sadly, the photographs of today’s vase of daisies do not really do them justice – in real life they are far more vibrant and pick out the bright coloured bands of the lighthouse-shaped vase, bought from a local pottery in the Scilly Isles when we visited a couple of years back. The prop is another daisy, sunflower ‘Italian White’, which has performed very poorly this year, especially when compared to its queenly neighbour.

I may be a little late responding to comments this week, but don’t let that deter you from posting your own vase. Late summer is still providing plenty of picking material here and I look forward to seeing what you can find in your own gardens: just leave the usual links so we can share in the pleasure your Monday vase brings you.

Six on Saturday: 70 Days of Sculpture for RHS Harlow Carr’s 70th

Joining Jon the Propagator for Six on Saturday

Wordless Wednesday: Susan

In a Vase on Monday: Not a Patch on Velvet

Just a quick pick for today, a vase of ‘Velvet Queen’ sunflowers, the first time they have been cut for a vase this year, aided and abetted by a step ladder (hint: needed for one of The Projects) that happened to be at an appropriate end of the garden. This regal sunflower has performed well in the cutting beds and has been blooming for around three months, with branching stems producing a number of blooms in a range of sizes. I have also grown the dwarf sunflower Dwarf Sunspot again, which grows to about 18″, but the flowers only lasted two or three weeks. In a sunflower trial/demonstration at RHS Harlow Carr this weekend a middling-height sunflower named Santa Lucia caught my eye and I shall be looking out for this one though.

As I plonked the velvety monarch with just a mere hint of artistry in an unmarked vintage green earthenware vase, I had in mind a piece of ‘crazy patchwork’ created with richly coloured and randomly shaped velvet pieces, that I thought I had tucked away with other quilts, bought during a textile-buying period when we first began to have some disposable income after renovating the house and building the extension. Most are stuffed into an open-fronted cupboard on a landing so it should have been easy to find.

Sadly, that was not to be, so whether it was just a figment of my imagination after all I cannot say, and we have instead an alternative piece of patchwork as prop, created not from velvet but patterned and textured silks with a few hexagons of a fine woollen fabric. From

the nature of the patterns I have always considered it was likely to date from the late Regency or early Victorian period, but I could be completely wrong. As with many quilts, each hexagon was stitched together on a paper template and in some cases, as with this one, the paper was never removed so a bit of sleuthing might turn up a fragment of dated newspaper. However, the fabric is delicate and fraying in parts so I shall not be attempting an exercise in detection.

Do join with us today on IAVOM and share a vase or container of blooms or other material from your garden or found locally – thinking out of the box is always encouraged! As other contributors already know, it will bring you much pleasure during the coming week, and if you would like to share that pleasure with us just leave links to and from this post.

End of Month View: Hidden Disarray!

From last Saturday’s post, which featured a number of unidentified projects, you may have correctly assumed that we have a number of changes ‘on the go’; other than a single largely completed one, August’s End of Month View carefully ensures no hints are given. Suffice to say, all are more ‘improvement’ than ‘change’, but between them they do create some additional planting space – which is always a good thing in my book. The EOMV, however,  brushes these schemes aside in favour of a quick romp around the garden, starting with the usual view from the back of the house:

The streamside and shrub border, from the house and then from the far end:

The woodland:

View from the both over the herbaceous borders and the same borders from ground level, complete with fully functioning wind sculpture, turning simultaneously in two different directions in the wind, as it should be (hurrah!):

The clematis colonnade and its underplanting of roses, with the bronze heuchera bed in the foreground:

The woodland edge border from the same spot, and then looking back from the far end:

The three bold borders:

The cutting beds:

The blue and white borders and the rose garden, both difficult to portray because of their layouts:

Heading back towards the house with the snowdrop border and its white summer annuals on the right:

Peeping through the glass of the Coop:

And finally, inspecting the slightly shady border:

Excuse the rush – did you manage to keep up (do check out the map under The Garden tab above to get your bearings)? What I particularly noticed today was the huge amount of greenery,  a glorious comfort blanket of lushness that goes a long way to make up for any shortfall in August blooms. Do come again, when perhaps September and the impending autumn may soon begin putting paid to some of that lushness.

Six on Saturday: And Now For Something a Little Bit Different

Spring flowering rhododendron, petite R ‘Impedium’ above and a normally early spring flowering Hellebore ‘Double Aubergine White’ below:

One of many flowers (mostly over) of winter flowering Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’:

Flower buds on winter flowering Clematis armandii ‘Snowdrift’:

Seeds pods swelling on a potted calla lily in the Coop, where there has been an unusually large number of flies this summer (is it possible they have actually been attracted by the group of insectivorous plants that are in there?):

Almost all my witch hazels are covered in seed pods, proving that there are plenty of pollinating insects around in winter as well as the milder months:

That’s my Six for this Saturday; thank you to Jon the Propagator for hosting and do pop over to his blog to look at other sixes.