In a Vase on Monday: Testing, Testing

I was tempted by all sorts of delicacies for today’s vase – tiny emergent scillas, the first Anemone blanda, various primula/polyanthus, and even some tulips which were eagerly reaching out for Sunday’s warmth and sunshine – but either there were not enough blooms (tulips, scillas and anemones) or the stems were too short (primula).

However, completing my morning ramble took me past Daphne mezerium ‘Rubra’ with its breaking buds and flashes of purple and in seconds the purple was picked up in a stem of Pulmonaria ‘Victorian Brooch’, a dark leaf from Lunaria ‘Chedglow’ and a few pieces of ‘Mondo grass’ Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’. Completing the set was a twig of a cultivated pink hawthorn, its buds swollen and ready to pop. Having enjoyed watching the wild plum flowers open from a bare twig placed in a vase, I decided to experiment further and bring a full stem of this hawthorn inside as well as the smaller snippet, to see if it can be encouraged into bloom earlier. I have also tested ornamental quince, chaenomeles, but without success, an interesting result bearing in mind how long it takes for their buds to open on the bush (in my garden, at least).

Not testing my creativity skills very much, the petite stems were simply placed in one of the batch of redundant test tubes I bought from eBay a couple of years back, and accompanied by two more in different sizes.

This week’s indecisiveness is subtly indicative of the reawakening of the garden, but currently the number of gardening tasks seem to be increasing at the same rate as the amount of time available to do them is decreasing. Hopefully this week will be rather less busy and enable inroads to be made but, even so, having A List has suddenly become a necessity rather than a useful tool.

What have you been encouraged by in your garden, or tempted to pick to bring inside and admire at close quarters? As always, it does not have to be flowers, and it certainly doesn’t have to be popped into a vase, as many of you have shown us over the years. Please share your finds with us if you like by leaving the usual links to and from this post.