Thursday...

There are masses of seed pods in the garden at the moment. I particularly like the Love in a Mist ones although the opium poppy heads are pretty lovely too. As I've never grown either of these before  it's a real treat to include them in arrangements...

What is trickier to include are the flowers from my Purple Galaxy Day Lily, as they literally only last a day so I won't ever pick them in bloom...

This was the first one of the year which opened yesterday morning...

...at midday

...and early evening

...and then this morning ( alongside day 2 lily ). 

So in its pretty demise I allowed myself to work it into a table arrangement...and give it an extra day!

Thursday...

Whilst some of the flowers in the garden continue  to flower abundantly, others seem to be coming to the end of a floral burst.

The sweet peas are a joy and the pinks are producing loads more flowers this year too, but the Campanula seem to be in recession...

Early this morning I picked some flowers, not really knowing what I was going to do with them, but with the incentive that apparently the more sweet peas you pick, the more they grow...

I decided I wanted to utilise how the campanula have become longer and much more stemmy than they were a couple of weeks ago...

...and combine the shortness of the pinks and the wispyness of the sweet peas, whilst, at the same time, incorporating their natural flow and shape coupled with the Honeysuckle.

When I got back in, the 2 tired, bamboo-style ceramic ikebana vase was calling... ( it is basically 2 separate vases in one )

...luckily an old chip at the top, ( which looks like my Granny tried to repair ), is never visible once the flowers are placed inside

...sometimes I look at an arrangement and wish I hadn’t gone on to fiddle with something... I liked how the campanula hung to the side...but then added a few too many!

So I removed some...

...and added one of my paintings ( The Scent of Lilies ) and some old books to enhance the colours and textures of the flowers and vase.

I used the remaining bits and pieces and some of the scabious from last week, for an ad-hoc arrangement in a Guinness pint glass for inside my shed...

whilst my Great Grandmother, Mabel, sitting in her garden, looks on...

Wild Wednesday...

So, driving back from the shops, I see this extroidinary display of wild flowers in a very un-extroidinary part of Brighton...

I've watched these flowers growing over the last few months on the way back from various weekly food shopping trips, but I couldn't have anticipated just how beautiful they were going to become...

.... I had to pull over.

Seeing such a mass of them was breathtaking, and I thought Brighton and Hove City Council really wouldn't mind me picking just a few to take home and share...

...and to be honest, I couldn't stop playing with, and admiring them for hours...

... I particularly liked the Cornflowers as they were my school flower ( yes, we really did have a school flower; it was the basic design for our school emblem! )

but I adored all the colours together...

... and understandably completely fell in love!

Thursday...with shells and wood

I’ve been tidying the shed over the last couple of days as during May it becomes an installation for the Open House Exhibition, and because this year it was ‘The Shipwreck Shed’ there are lots of old bits of rope hanging around, as well as wood, shells and pebbles which I’ve collected, over the months, from various Cornwall and Sussex beaches.

I find it difficult to throw shells away; they usually end up grouped in some darkened corner for eons, so this morning I thought I'd give them an airing on The Table...

Finding flowers to complement the shells was a bit tricky but I still had a stem of Euphorbia which I had brought back from a Cornwall trip in April, and the colour of the Californian Poppies completely matched the Periwinkles...

I love having pieces of worn wood in the garden, ( although there is probably just a bit too much driftwood at the moment as a result of The Shipwreck Shed )...

I found the old lobster pot in a truck bound for the tip which was parked outside a pub having a make-over in Brighton. My son found the rusty pole in Hastings and although I have a real love-hate relationship to metal objects in water, I think it kind of suits the garden and I love how the Quaking Grass softens it’s solid, yet decaying form.

This old chair really had its day some years ago, but I haven’t had the heart to throw it out or burn it. 

Before it’s appearance in the shed during May, it hosted an abundance of old sticks and branches, but I’ve since planted new things in its absence, so it has to find a new home in the garden...preferably not hanging from the Buddleja...

This old piece of wood was at the bottom of the garden somewhere when I moved here 13 years ago. 

I noticed how beautifully weathered it had become last year so I decided to show it off amongst the Montbretia and Hollyhocks...

I also utilise the old Echium stems as, although they’re hollow, they’re really quite robust and great for supporting the Dog Rose/ Virginia Creeper arbour I made.

I wish that the Flat Winkles could somehow be shown off in the garden, and although I’ve tried putting them in pots of succulents... they just really end up looking like you’ve accidentally spilled a can of sweetcorn!

Thursday...

...tiny cup

...lots of blue

...busy table.

Wednesday...

Tha Campanula has erupted along the garden path...

The snails get to it but there is SO much of the stuff that it never really matters...

The Hosta on the other hand is more precious...

as are the Sweet Peas...

Although I have a constant snail battle, I saw this enormous one today with a daub of cream paint on its shell; the same cream paint of my shed! 

It must have been around the day I painted it over 18 months ago and rather begrudgingly I couldn't help but admire it's resilience...

Maybe I'll put paint spots on all of them... my personal flock of snails!