In a Vase on Monday: That’s Nice, Coconut Ice

16.09.2024 - 08:50 / ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com / Cathy

Please be assured that the title is not intended to reflect how I feel about the vase, but more of an acknowledgment that a pink and white combination always makes me think of ‘coconut ice’, and I am very partial to coconut in cakes and confectionery although not in things like coconut water or any other drink, alcoholic or otherwise. Coconut ice, if you haven’t heard of it, is an old-fashioned confection made from coconut, sugar and milk, one half coloured pink, the other remaining white, and no doubt far too sweet for my taste these days.

The coconut ice prompter began with blooms of Dahlia ‘Eye Candy’, new this year and now very much a favourite, and Cosmos‘Double Click Rose BonBon, the flowers of the latter extraordinarily fluffy and almost as big as the dahlias. To tone down the sugary pinkness, I also cut Dahlia ‘White Onesta’ and Antirrhinum ‘Liberty Classic White’, the latter still blooming after at least 3 months. A single stem of pale pink saponaria, spreading thuggishly through a border but not producing flowers till now, was added before the plant is consigned to the compost heap. For a bit of dangle, the attractive grass Chasmanthium latifolium and a lost-label white sanguisorba were added too. I am rather puzzled as I seem to have 2 different white sanguisorba, one with erect blooms and this with dangly blooms, but I am not sure what either of them are (although the former may be S canadensis) and have no recollection of purchasing them. On a last-minute whim, I also included dark buttons of Knautia macedonica, which had clearly not received the message about coconut ice.

A white enamel jug was chosen as a vase, but I did not exercise any restraint in filling it, so more may well have been less – or is it the