When you garden every day, it can seem like nothing is happening. With our hot and dry early summer, I feel like I spent the last month and a half just watering and battling various bug infestations. Even picking sweet peas has felt like a chore when it's over 30 degrees.
But after leaving the garden for almost two weeks of travel out east, it was easy to see how much everything had grown. Within a few hours of landing at the airport I had made a big, bright arrangement of zinnias, sweet peas, poppies, foxglove, frosted explosion grass and verbena in a new pitcher I picked up while in New York. It made coming home so much sweeter. My little baby seedlings are finally producing lots of flowers!
The easy favourites right now are poppies - every morning I walk around the garden to see the new ones that have opened. It's also a good time of day to watch the bees, who couldn't be happier with the veritable feast the garden is providing at this time of year. Bachelor buttons, cosmos, poppies, oregano, veronica, agastache, mint and perennial scabiosa seem to be their current flowers of choice. Yesterday, as I picked flowers for my grandparents' 60th anniversary party they were buzzing around me, drinking from the freshly cut blooms.
Shirley poppies amidst the grasses
Shirley poppies are an exceptionally short-lived cut flower but I love their delicate nature - to help them take up water, sear freshly cut stems
Phlox and oregano
I am in LOVE with this phlox called 'Creme Brulee' which I grew from seed from Chiltern Seeds in the UK
The first of the roses, Koko Loko, inspired this gorgeous colour scheme using phlox, heuchera, scabiosa, oregano, Frosted Explosion grass and calibrachoa.
I was in charge of cake and flowers for the party - two of my favourite things! I made a four layer cake (alternating vanilla and chocolate) with raspberry and vanilla swiss buttercream. I loved making the little flower arrangement on top of the cake with beautiful geranium leaves and sweet pea tendrils.