Vase on Monday: Ivy and Driftwood

Look at those luscious green-black berries, I felt a bit mean bringing them inside as I am sure they will be a feast for a blackbird if the weather gets colder.

Last weekend I took Big Bro and Little Bro to Charmouth Beach to collect driftwood after the storms

The driftwood is the small bits lying in the foreground, plus some jetsam I could not resist. The large pieces of wood behind the vase are glorious tree stumps, from my son-in-law’s farm, yet to be shown off to their best advantage in my garden. They wait next to my high-rise bug-hotel, whilst I try to decide where to put them.

There is always an horrendous amount of plastic detritus washed up on the beaches, but I find it a fascinating mix of colour and texture with mysterious human backstories

Turquoise, yellow, black, rusty burnt orange, hints of cobalt blue and all the soft browns and greys of the pebbles – now just imagine a Fair Isle design knitted in those colours it makes me want to rush out and source the wool and get knitting.

And then a different palette

The main colour a soft turquoise, with deeper turquoise and sky blue, a hint of pink and orange and red, with caramel, stone, white and siamese beige – mmm delicious! Now, I can see that colour mix as a cosy crocheted throw, or maybe a poncho like Lucy’s, with more pale turquoise in it, or like this free patten on Ravelry. And if you prefer to knit, this one looks snuggly.

There were quite a lot of people heading for the rock slide to hunt for fossils, (a bit too dangerous for my liking) whilst I was delving into the piles of rubbish washed up on the beach, but it seems I was not the only one interested ….

….the man on the left is taking photos of rubbish too.

As I was picking through my haul to find some long sticks for the ‘Vase’ today, I just could not help having a play around

I spent rather too long dong this…….. so there are more such scenes to show you another day.

I popped the vase amongst the house plants, next to my houseplant of the week:

Meet little Myfanwy, a rather beautiful Streptocarpus.

Grown from a leaf cutting, this is her first flower. I’m very fond of her as Myfanwy is what my Mum wanted to call me, and it is also the title a delightfully haunting Welsh song

Linking in with Cee’s flower of the Day

Cathy’s Vase on Monday

Today’s flowers

Macro Monday

Vase on Monday: Honeysuckle?!

Can you believe it! Honeysuckle in January – the weather has gone all ‘Pete Tong’!

The flowers are scented with a subtle, slightly sharper scent than summer blooms and sit in another charity shop find. I just love the design of this little mug.

In answer to Cathy’s question in her ‘Vase on Monday’ post, regarding the weather in my part of the world, this is the view out of my kitchen window: dark and raining…… again!

I had to play around with exposure settings in ‘Photos’ to get any decent pictures

As you can see the Kalanchoes are about to burst into colour again, I think it is due to giving them the proper amount of light.

An update on the progress of the hyacinths….

(This is my contribution to Cee’s Flower of the Day ; I Heart Macro ; Macro Monday, and Today’s Flowers.)…..don’t you just love that dusty mix of purple and grey-green…..

…..they seem to be stemless, but at least that means they won’t be flopping all over the place. The scent in my sitting room first thing in the morning is delicious!

Do you know what this is?

I’m making this my houseplant of the week, but I don’t know its name. A friend gave me a little off-shoot about 6 months ago and it has multiplied and now looks as if it is about to flower – very exciting!

Do you have a houseplant looking at its best at the moment?

Vase on Monday: Blackberry Blooms

In December?!

The blackberry flowers are in a night-light holder with a gold labyrinth on it. There were a few years when I became utterly obsessed by labyrinths, creating them, drawing them and walking them. I still do walk them whenever I come across them and draw them out on sand and soil whenever the mood takes me. Fun for children to run around and a beautiful aid to meditation and decision making.

The flowers are on a thornless blackberry that I planted in the Spring, it sat there doing nothing until the warm weather we had in November sparked it into life – the berries just shrivel after the green stage. I guess it would be best to cut it right back down to near the ground and hope for more settled seasons in 2016.

The buds create exquisite little stars as they burst through their casing

and form their tissue paper flowers

My houseplant of the week is an African Violet, grown from a leaf cutting

As I’m photographing these flowers each week I’m noticing all sorts of fascinating details, not noticed before – cute!

Joining in with Cathy’s ‘Vase on Monday’ and Cee’s ‘Flower of the Day’ on both sites there are marvellous opportunities for bloghopping around the world.

Vase on Monday: Happy Solstice

Seasons collide.

Pelargonium, marigold, viburnum and a lychnis all in the celadon glazed Japanese green-tea cup. The silver date card holder is there to mark the wonder of these summer blooms remaining in flower at the Winter Solstice.

A date to celebrate above all other in my world! Now the days get longer!

Hallelujah! 

Happy Winter Solstice one and all!

The perpetual calendar (does it have a different name) is precious to me as it belonged to the parents of my beloved step-grandmother whom I called Dabbity. As a toddler I couldn’t say Aunty Margery.

Grandad, Dabbity and I used to go and stay with her parents in a tall narrow town house in Winchester. So many happy memories – they had a basement where the laundry was done and I was fascinated to see how the water squished out of the clothes when they were put through the mangle! I loved that place, I loved them and they adored me, having no grandchildren of their own. The calendar lived on the mantlepiece and I was allowed stand on a stool to change the date each day by turning the cards – it was thrill to the 4/5/6 year old me, and somehow it still is!

Pelargoniums flowering outside in December – I want to be delighted, but such signs of global warming are alarming. They are growing in a pot outside my front door (crushed eggshells cover the soil).

Also in flower is this gorgeous verbascum ‘Clementine’, normal flowering time June – September.Still in a pot as I haven’t found the right position for it yet, I will have to provide it with more drainage than the soil in my garden allows, but I just couldn’t resist that colour combination.

And my houseplant of the week and also entry for Cee’s Flower of the Day is the Lipstick Plant, (Aeschynanthus) so called because of how the flower emerges from its bud, although my orange one doesn’t seem to do that lipstick thing.

Oooof! That colour!

I grew it from a cutting and it didn’t flower for a couple of years but oh boy it was worth the wait. Easy to grow, so long as you don’t leave it sitting in water when flowering – if you do, it drops its flowers in protest (I know, cos I’ve done it 😦 ). It sits in my bedroom window on a gorgeous plant stand, with side shelves, I found in a second-hand warehouse in my local town.

I love that view, it’s why I bought the house. I write most of my blog posts looking out of this window, I’m looking out there now as I type watching the dog walkers go along the footpath and a pheasant strutting through the maize stubble – sometimes it’s hard to leave it!

Pop across to join the ‘Vase’ party that happens each Monday on Rambling in the  Garden. Such a fun meme to join in with thanks to Cathy’s wonderful hosting.

May we all look forward to peace, joy and happiness as the days are filled with more precious light.

Vase on Monday – Astrantia

Joining in with Cathy’s In a Vase on Monday, featuring Astrantia and Leycesteria Formosa

And Cee’s Flower of the Day – astrantia

Astrantia has such a ghostly etherial quality, which I really like very much. If you would like to see a larger version of the above photo click here to go to my PHOTOS Page.

It is hard to photograph well on these dull days, so I tried several positons and then used the special ‘highlighting’ effect on my camera.

The pots I have used this week are a beautiful glazed pottery green-tea cup which was given as a present by Kimonoboy in Japan – more of him and his shop in a later post; a crackle-glazed little pot, another charity shop find; and they sit on a rectangular plate/dish – I bought several of these back in my dinner-party-days in the 70s for a Japanese themed menu, I attempted a sushi starter which I put on these plates – they were actually sold as butter dishes – nowadays I find them to be perfect to use as paint palettes – a piece of greaseproof paper over a thin layer of water and then put blobs of your acrylic paints on top of the greaseproof – the paint stays wet and workable for hours

My houseplant of the week: Oxalis

It was languishing in a shady corner of my house and as soon as I gave it more light it started to flower – I LOVE this plant – thank you to Linda who gave this to me a few years ago – I think of her every time I see it. ❤ The leaves are like butterflies and they close at night – enchanting!