After a very busy week I am pleased to be back to share a few weekend flowers with you.
Last night we were invited to a BBQ being held to celebrate a number of special occasions. Our lovely hosts ( an American and a Brit) are celebrating in 2014 20 years of marriage as well as a 50th birthday and the 16th and 18th birthdays of their two sons. To mark all these occasions they chose an Independence Day theme for their BBQ party last night. As it was impossible to find one card to commemorate all these occasions, my very crafty friend rustled something up.
As usual on these occasions my contribution was flowers – just a few as I am in the middle of preparations for our family holiday and have a house full of young people to cater for. I looked through all my floristry books for some Independence Day inspiration, but in the end made up my own red, white and blue hand tied bouquet.
The beautiful red gerberas came from the market – I am quite short of red flowers at the moment. To these I added white scabious, ammi majus and shasta daisies from the Cutting Garden. From my garden borders I stole some blue cerinthe major and blue geranium Roxanne. In a few weeks time I will have a fresh batch of blue Nigella and the very true blue flowers of Salvia Patens, but these were not quite ready to pick this weekend.
As our hosts are a marriage of British and American cultures the celebration included both of our flags and the bunting was perfect for for either country! An all American BBQ was followed by a Betty Crocker chocolate cake – we Brits did have a few glasses of Pimms though – do any of my American readers know if Pimms is available in the US?
Luckily a very warm and dry evening followed what had been quite a wet day. We kept our eyes on the skies in case a soaking threatened, but the night stayed dry. I did capture a very dark cloud passing over which set off these moody cardoons magnificently.
As the threatening clouds moved away we were treated to a beautiful evening sky just before the darkness moved in.
When darkness fell a chill was in the air, but not wanting to move indoors we lit a fire in this beautiful brazier. There really is nothing like a summer evening spent outside sharing stories around a blazing fire. Many thanks to our lovely hosts for such a memorable evening.
I must say that I am feeling quite spoilt this summer – we had beautiful weather at Ascot, not one but now two evening events when we have sat outside till late, the sun blazed down on our daughters graduation and it is still only the very start of summer.
As I mentioned earlier I am about to set off on our annual trip to visit family in Florida. This year we will be a party of 7 as both my daughters have added lovely boyfriends to our family group. I hope to pop back tomorrow with a quick post for In A Vase On Monday, but I will then be absent for the next two weekends – I intend to use my break to do a lot of reading and recharge my gardening and blogging batteries. I am not taking my laptop on holiday, but I will be posting a few pictures from Florida on Instagram throughout so if you are interested you can join me on my Instagram account. When I return I am looking forward to my dahlias and maybe even a few zinnias might have started to flower.
I hope to see you back here tomorrow for In A Vase On Monday.