In a Vase on Monday: Warming a Frog

My original thoughts for a post title ( ‘As Easy As…’) were thwarted when I realised the blue and white alphabet mug I planned to use as a vase was too small; several other similarly coloured vases were rejected for various reasons before I settled on this clear glass jar with its integral ‘cage’. A miniature bird cage, no doubt intended for a doll’s house, now serves as a satisfactory prop – someone must have left the cage open though, as the bird has flown…

I may well have created a vase on Monday with the title ‘Candy Girl’ before, but with Dahlia ‘Eye Candy’ as the main focal point that is what popped into my head, alongside lyrics of the Archies’ late 1960s song ‘Sugar Sugar’.

Well, I did it, got out our stepladder and climbed up to cut some of the mammoth sunflowers for today’s vase! Joining them are several stems of Rudbeckia ‘Cappucino’ which work brilliantly with the sunflowers as they are all on the same colour palette. The sunflowers, ‘Velvet Queen’ and ‘Earthwalker’, are both shades of copper, and the rudbeckia range from pure to two-tone copper in various coppery degrees.

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Three weeks ago I posted an ‘Armful For Julie’ on IAVOM, blooms scheduled for my retiring Pilates teacher but, thwarted by her illness, not given. After battling a nasty bout of Covid, her third and worst, she will be calling into our class tomorrow to say a belated goodbye to those who have known her a long time, so I am trying again and have created a slightly smaller armful of blooms to go with the vase that is wrapped and ready for her.

Not having used fiery colours for a few weeks, that is what I had in mind for today’s IAVOM contribution but, having picked a stem of Alstroemeria ‘Indian Summer’ as my starting point, I found there were no suitable blooms on Dahlias ‘David Howard’ or ‘Totally Tangerine’ to continue my planned theme. However, there was a single bloom on new Dahlia ‘Blyton Softer Gleam’, albeit looking slightly more yellow than the colour that attracted me in the catalogue, so this was snipped and the search continued.

Today’s boozy vase shares some elements with last week’s although lacks its fullness, containing less than an armful but more than a small posy, although with more time at my disposal it could have become more fulsome than it is. Having achieved my personal challenge of creating a vase with such a large number of blooms, I feel more confident of repeating the exercise and the garden is certainly proving the material to do so.

I have been watching and admiring the white antirrhinum, A ‘Liberty Classic White’, in the cutting beds for a few weeks, not wanting to cut any stems until all our garden visitors had departed. Now that they have indeed all gone, I was at liberty to use the stems in today’s vase, where they form the mainstay of an all-white arrangement.

I have chosen roses to go in my Monday vase this week because they are the most floriferous blooms in the garden at this point in mid-June. There are two varieties, growing together in the gallery border, and both seem to have done better this year than before – behind the gallery fence is the woodland which blocks sun from the south, so the roses only get the morning and late afternoon sun. However, our neighbours cut some of the lower branches from their huge mature beech over the winter and perhaps this allows more light to filter through.

My early sweet peas, grown in the greenhouse, are now flowering prolifically and I have to work hard at picking them regularly – but will have to work even harder soon as there are now buds on my outdoor varieties. The indoor ones have been bred specially to flower at lower light levels and in the UK have to be grown in a greenhouse. For some reason the lavender blooms are more dominant this year, although I sowed the same number of seeds of each colourway.

Bloom of the moment here is undoubtedly the delphinium, displaying its stunning deep blue spires in the blue & white border. I have had this plant many years and although it lost its label it may be ‘King Arthur’; it was moved from its original position about 3 or 4 years ago and has done even better since – so much so that it was split and part of it moved to one of the bold borders where sadly it declined to return after its second season. Although it does have side shoots, it never really reflowers to the same extent later in the season as perceived wisdom suggests it might.

It’s a strange in-between season at the moment, no longer really spring, but surely not summer yet, despite all the roses. Summer, however, is definitely on its way, despite the 36mm of rain on Wednesday and the thundery showers yesterday, and today’s vase contains the first evidence of both summer colour and summer abundance.