Welcome to ‘In A Vase On Monday’ when I am linking up with Cathy at Rambling In The Garden to share a vase of flowers picked from my garden every Monday.
This weeks contribution to Cathy’s lovely meme was put together in the late afternoon today. I have been tidying beds and planting bulbs in the Cutting Garden today, as well as dead heading my dahlias quite ruthlessly in the hope of protecting them from the approaching storm. When I realised the time it was a case of picking very quickly – before I lost the daylight completely. These early evenings are still catching me out on an almost daily basis!
The flowers that I grabbed from the Cutting Garden were prepped in the kitchen (by removing all the foliage along the stems and recutting the stem at an angle) and then placed into this tall white jug. I also floated a large flower head of the dahlia Lilac Time in a stemmed Bonbon bowl to show you just how big this dahlia can be. I then rushed outside with the flowers to catch the last of the light and quickly took my photos in the rain as the evening started to draw in.
This mix of flowers – dahlias, cosmos, annual clary, stocks and knautia reminded me of a woven floral tapestry.
Lilac Time is my favorite dahlia this year! It manages to be both elegant and graceful despite being so large. I just had to stop and take a few extra shots to try and capture her beauty.
The other dahlia I chose today is called Purple Gem – a Cutting Garden staple for me. Sadly I could not get the color right in the photographs. It is a true purple, but appears more pink than purple in these shots.
I am lucky to still have plenty of cosmos and annual clary to pick – both of these flowers were self sown in the Cutting Garden this year.
I am also enjoying the flowers of a late sowing of 10 week stocks, which are looking very fresh in the fading cutting beds. These were sown in July just before we left for our holiday and have been in flower for a couple of weeks now.
I will be keeping my fingers crossed tonight that the predicted winds do not do too much damage to the Cutting Garden. My shelter belt of yew hedges around the perimeter are still quite young, but they are providing some shelter from the wind these days. I was encouraged to read recently that in theory a hedge is a better windbreak than a wall, as wind can be channelled over a solid wall whereas it will pass through a hedge with the force taken out of it.
I am very busy in the garden right now tidying borders and planting bulbs. I think I have said before that I find November and December very bad months to be in the garden, so I like to get as much done as possible in the hopes of hanging up my boots for a couple of months. In the Cutting Garden I am clearing fading plants out of beds, weeding and mulching and replanting with bulbs and biennials sown earlier in the summer. In the Vegetable Garden all the summer crops have been lifted and eaten or stored. The winter crops are well covered, compost is being spread over empty ground and all that is left is to plant my garlic and broad beans. I am sorry that I have been absent from Peonies & Posies for the last week and that I have not been visiting all your lovely blogs much – I really am prioritising getting the garden under control for a few weeks!
This week I hope to be back on Friday, when I will be talking about my plans for the Cutting Garden next year. In the meantime I hope you will pop over to Cathy’s blog to see what she and the others have made this week.
