In a vase on Monday – red, white and blue (and purple)

Denby – Boston jug – sweetpeas, petunias, geraniums – 6 July 2015

This week’s theme is red, white and blue (and purple) because Wimbledon is going well for Andy Murray and his brother Jamie, the sun is shining in SW19 and also in honour of American Independence Day.  Hope all my American readers enjoyed their 4th July celebrations.

Today it’s a mini vase.  The flowers are:

• First sweetpeas from the plants growing by my south facing front door (it’s the pink/white candy coloured one) and some white ones too – the scent is drifting through the house. Even though there are only three flowers in the posy.
• A bright scarlet geranium from the hanging basket at the front of the house– no idea what variety as it came in a mixed set from B&Q – it’s got a darker brown stem and flowers though.
• Also some white geranium flowers from a big plant that’s been overwintered a couple of times in the garage.
• And some purple and white petunias (which was the closest I could get to stripes). They’re growing in a trough down on the decking with the bistro chairs – with a lot of purple, pink and white flowers.

It was at this point I realised the only blue flowers I had in the garden that hadn’t gone over, were trailing lobelia, with just the odd flower, so they didn’t work at all well in the vase as they kept falling out.  There’s probably some special florists trick I should have used ;-).  I really must remember to plant some more blue flowers next year.

Denby – Boston jug – sweetpeas, petunias, geraniums – 6 July 2015

Hence the blue vase – It is a ‘Denby Boston’ jug which I’ve had for over 20 years. When I first moved to Manchester my mum would arrive for visits with a few pieces of Denby tucked under her arm.   The plates and bowls have a blue rim and cream inside.  I still love them and have a large collection now and use them every day – not just ‘for best’.

If you look carefully, you’ll see the flowers are very wet; as it has been hurling down with rain in Manchester on and off this week.  Tricky to photograph too as it looked like Autumn out there. But at least my water butts are full up and I’ve only got to do minimal watering of baskets under the eaves and trees at the bottom of the garden.

I’ve only been to the US twice – once in 1990 for a scientific conference in Miami Beach and ten years ago with my mum who wanted to go whale watching in New England; we stayed in Plymouth and visited Boston too.  We saw very rare Wright whales – it was an amazing experience.   I’d love to go back but need to save up for a trip to Australia where my brother and family live in Melbourne – he and my sister in law were over in Boston and New York with her work which is very random indeed – and reminded me how much I liked America.

I think my chap and I need to plan more overseas travel adventures… it’s been a hard few months – so we’ll  be sitting at the bottom of the garden on the bistro chairs (Where I sit part 1) planning some trips – yoda will probably advise :-).

Do you have any suggestions for flower and gardening related trips in Europe or the US?

I want to go to Keukenhof (I love tulips) and also back to the Alhambra and visit some of those incredible Italian villa gardens.

And as usual I’m late to the party (I’ve been very busy and energy levels are very low this week).  Do have a look at all the lovely vases hosted by Cathy over on Rambling in the Garden. Anyone can join in – I enjoy looking at everyone’s vases very much and it gives me such a lot of ideas for my garden.

Have a wonderful week, enjoy the tennis (come on Andy) and I hope you have sunshine where you are and I’m hoping the weather improves here.

Carpe Diem

Love Bec xx