Yes, he did indeed ply us with dahlias too, and my goodness haven’t we enjoyed appreciating these at close quarters! The quality and size of the blooms are just wonderful and the length and straightness of the stems show just what a semi-professional dahlia grower can do with their advanced knowledge and years of experience. I am in complete awe of their perfection!
Brian, the owner of the garden (see yesterday’s post), had worked in horticulture until he retired, including for a specialist dahlia/chrysanthemum company, and clearly loved his dahlias which were the mainstay of his garden. He was delighted to share this enthusiasm with an interested party and readily shared the names of all these dahlias and others I enquired about but without any means of recording them at the time I am afraid I haven’t got a proper record. My favourite was the glowing scarlet pompom or is it a ball? (I believe there is a technical difference in dahlia nomenclature!), which we were told is virtually the same as ‘Blyton Lady in Red’ which Brian also had but which he didn’t pick for us; both were just as stunning:
I recognised ‘David Howard’, a large decorative orange dahlia, but was gobsmacked by this almost luminous yellow one, such a distinctive shade that you could imagine would really glow in the dark; I think I am correct in remembering this as ‘Glorie van Heemstede’:
The ‘Brian’s Dream’ of the title is a white dahlia with a hint of lilac and I am sure Brian said that both dahlias at the top of the picture below were that variety; certainly the lighter one is. SAdly, I didn’t think to ask him if it was one he bred himself… The beautiful violet one is possibly ‘Willo’s Violet’, another beauty. Hmmm, I am finding myself particularly enamoured by these pompom/ball dahlias…
One of the red dahlias had suffered a broken stem before we got back so was cut short and popped into a pretty little stoneware vase, whilst Mum’s small stock of vases was searched to find a vase and tall and sturdy enough to cope with the other top-heavy blooms. A tall ‘moss’ Caithness Glass vase was retrieved from the loft and to keep the contents distinctly different one of the two luminous blooms was given its own vase, a smaller one from the same maker. I didn’t want to experiment too much with the length of stems in the main vase I case I cut too much off too soon, but after photographs were taken I did cut another inch or two from the violet one which seems to balance the vase a little better.
I know there are many of you out there who will be getting pleasure from picking material from their gardens and putting them in their own vases today. I have bent my own rules a little as these dahlias were not from my own garden but of course they are still in the spirit of the meme and not only are they bringing pleasure to my Mum, the Golfer and myself, but cutting them for us clearly gave Brian pleasure as well. Do share your own pickings with the rest of us too by writing about them on your blogs and leaving links to and from this post, as always.
I will probably not be able to reply to all your comments this time round and may not get to see all your Monday vases either, so apologies in advance if this proves to be the case – you know how diligent I normally am!
Visiting my Mum for a few days we were pleased to find that this visit coincided with a ‘Garden Safari’ when visitors were invited tom pop in and view 11 gardens on the island, in aid of the ‘Seed for Life, Feed for Life’ charity, supporting farmers in Malawi. As the flyer said, it was an opportunity to find out what grows on the island and the challenges met by the growers. The greatest challenge is of course the weather, and accordingly it rained heavily on and off until about 3.30 when it felt safe to venture out and visit at least some of the gardens.
I have been drooling over these ruby coloured dahlias for a week or two, spiky ‘Nuit d’Été’ and decorative ‘Karma Naomi’, so it was a real pleasure to snip them for today’s vase and seek out other suitably ruby blooms to join them.
Naturally, the dangly amaranthus lambs’ tails were a must – but not the champion 33″ long one – and several Cosmos ‘Click Cranberries’, found in the adjacent cutting beds; from a hanging basket came stems of a striking annual verbena (visible in the overhead view above) and from the shrub border a ruby stem and flowers of Sedum ‘Jose Aubergine’ and striking blooms of Persicaria ‘Fat Domino’, one of several persicaria added to the garden two years ago and now really beginning to shine. Several vases were tried and rejected but this dark blue glass hyacinth vase seems to fit the bill well and the pink handstitched quilt 
used as a backdrop successfully complements the ruby blooms, the overall effect being one of richness of colour. The unusual inclusion of an onion as a prop came about because red onions are a rare purchase for me but were an ingredient in a weekend meal we were having; less strange is the beautiful multi faceted garnet, one of the natural formations of this particular crystal. Garnets are reputed to be energising and regenerating and useful to have in a crisis.
Yesterday took us on a small trip which, like most of our trips, served more than one purpose, thus ‘killing two birds with one stone’; thinking about the idiom and not wishing to sound unkind to our feathered friends, I looked up its origins. It seems that it may date back to Greek and Roman mythology and the story of Icarus and Daedalus, who constructed wings to escape from the Labyrinth in Crete. Daedalus is said to have obtained the feathers used to make the pair’s famous wings by killing two birds with a single stone. He may of course just have been bragging – but whether it is true or not I have abbreviated my title to the solitary stone.
At the eBay vendor’s home, an hour and half saw the greenhouse dismantled and stacked in the car for the journey home; today the job of clearing and dismantling the existing small greenhouse (also an eBay purchase) and the process of modifying the newer bargain began. Having done the preliminary clearing and dismantling, I left the Golfer to it (cutting to fit, re-erecting, weatherproofing the join between the two greenhouses, etc) and got on with rehashing the borders. This is the sort of task that he excels at, easily recognising how to make things fit for purpose (with the occasional practical and design input from myself) and in a small space like a greenhouse too many cooks could easily spoil the broth…hmm, I wonder what the origins of that idiom are…?
Look out for the next instalment…
