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.
“The first of December always makes my heart beat a little faster. The day it all starts. The festival that is Christmas has begun. The vulgar commerce of it all may have started weeks ago, but in this house the season starts today.” Nigel Slater from The Kitchen Diaries II.
This quote from Nigel Slater sums up how I feel at the start of the festive season. I may have bought a few cards, stockpiled some wrapping paper and made the Christmas pudding in November, but I have kept Christmas very much behind the scenes until today. In our house it all begins today – the decorations will be dragged from storage, the porch and driveway are twinkling with fairy lights (I am very particular about lights and they have to be traditional warm white and I do mean twinkling – not flashing) and I will start to write cards and wrap presents.
The 1st of December is when I begin to gradually decorate the house, always beginning in the kitchen as this is where I seem to spend most of my time during December. I like to keep the festive touches quite simple in the kitchen – too much clutter quickly becomes oppressive in a much used room.
Decorations are based around greenery, candles and fir cones. An advent calendar made up of 24 tiny stockings (bought many years ago) is strung across the kitchen window and filled with chocolates and an advent candle is burnt at tea time as often as possible (it is a standing joke that I always insist on having one, but never manage to finish it in time for Christmas).
Imagine my delight when I went to the greenhouse yesterday to find the Paperwhite narcissi that I had planted in early November in flower. They were tight buds until yesterday, when they opened just in time for the festive season. As I have explained before I rarely grow the bulbs inside as I prefer to use them as cut flowers. I plant bulbs successionally throughout the winter months in the greenhouse bed, where I find they flower in 4-5 weeks on sturdy stems.
This week I cut the stems to the same length and placed all the flowers in a tall narrow cylinder vase, which has supported the stems well. I placed the vase inside my zinc pot and added pine and ivy to fill out the arrangement (the pot needs to be lined with cellophane before adding water as it leaks. All flower vessels other than china and glass should be treated this way as they often leak causing damage the surfaces they stand on). After months of dahlias and chrysanthemums having a truly scented flower in the kitchen is divine – I am transported back to Christmases past and also looking forward to other lovely scents to come – hyacinths, lily of the valley, sweet peas etc.
To add a festive feel I have used a row of tealights in an old wooden box and a pair of white reindeer picked up at the garden centre whilst buying compost earlier this week.
I also made a smaller arrangement to balance the window ledge in this silver julep cup. In the cup is berried ivy, a few sprigs of eucalyptus and the last of my chrysanthemums ( I have cleared the greenhouse bed to make room for more Paperwhite bulbs).
It is hard to capture the whole window ledge on camera and of course you are missing the lovely scent, but hopefully you can get the idea.
You can also see these dying roses lying on the work top. I had been taking apart a vase of flowers when I realised I needed to take my photos before it went dark. I had kept these roses hoping they will dry and can be used in some way in my decorations for the drawing room. I will be talking more about these roses later this week, when I finally publish the posts about my recent trip to London.
Last week was a very hard week for me as my trees came down – I have felt quite deflated and not in the mood at all for writing. I have lots of photos to share showing the trees coming down and some lovely aerial shots of the garden taken from a cherry picker. There is also a time lapse video taken by one of the tree surgeons of the trunk of the tallest tree being cut down on my FaceBook page if you would like to take a look. I tried, but was not able to share it here.
My mood is much more optimistic this week – I love celebrating Christmas and this year have my sister-in-law and her husband and my 4 year old nephew joining us from Florida, so santa and his reindeer will be calling again which is always very exciting! Also I had a meeting this morning with a lovely bride to be to start planning the flowers for her April wedding – I cannot think of a better way to be starting the new gardening season than with planning a spring wedding!
I hope you have enjoyed this weeks festive flowers and that you will pop over to Cathy’s blog to see what she and the increasing number of others joining in have made this week. I promise to be back on Wednesday with my first post about that lovely London trip.
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Always dreamy to see your vases and how you present them….I love the thought of the greenhouse to have more flowers. And slowly decorating. I am with you about not starting the season too early. Of course seeing your vase was delightful and I was imagining the scent.
Thank you Donna – the greenhouse is a delight in the winter – full of bulbs and scent! I think that Christmas decorating is to be savoured – too much rushing spoils the season.
I love the small vases in the kitchen with the focus on white. Can’t wait to see what’s next.
Thank you John – with our falling temperatures this week the white feels just right.
I too adore Paperwhites and can’t get enough of them…or their scent! But so many people really do NOT like that smell. A friend was just telling me, this afternoon, that she thinks the bulbs this year have a much less defined scent. Could it be that the growers (or some of them) have been listening to these nay-sayers? I don’t know. My first batch just came into bloom this morning (!!) so I will have to wait a few days to see what happens.
Mine are doing a great job of scenting the kitchen Libby – I will be interested to hear what you think about yours. Heavy scent is tricky – I love paperwhites & hyacinths but find lillies quite overpowering – yet lillies are much more popular as a cut flower. Are you still giving your paperwhites an alcoholic drink? I would love a re run of that blog post!
Your paperwhites, greenery, reindeer and candles set just the right tone to kick off the holiday season Julie.
Thank you Susie – I am glad that you enjoyed it.
Now I wish I had bought some Paperwhites for this year! I love the simple elegance of your vase this week and thanks for the tip about lining a zinc vase. I often stand a small vase or jar inside other containers as I did this week with the basket. When did you plant the bulbs? Do you just throw the the bulbs away after flowering? I have some in a pot but they haven’t flowered for a second time.
Thank you Christina – I planted these at the beginning of November, so they have flowered very quickly. I have never had any luck with getting Paperwhites to flower again, so now I just throw them away. Although it feels wasteful it still works out much cheaper than buying them in flower at this time of the year.
Your kitchen looks so bright and cheerful with those lovely arrangements Julie. Very festive and light and airy too! 🙂
Thank you Cathy.
Really very stylish Julie, love your decluttered windowsill arrangements and they are very inspiring. Great tip too on the cellophane, it was one of those ‘of course, thats how you do that’ moments this morning. It will open up all sorts of possibilities for containers.
Thank you Julie – I am glad that this helped and look forward to seeing what possibilities you come up with!
Fantastic Julie – I thought you would be first with the Paperwhites! Mind you, my first batch are in bud although they wouldn’t be if I hadn’t taken on board what you do and planted some successionally. My first batch were planted mid Oct so are behind yours though – in a pot in the greenhouse and no heat. I will be having a think about what to present my first lot in, but it won’t beat the effect of yours in that gorgeous zinc pot that I envied when you showed it before 🙂 Well done for leading the way with decorations – I tend to start about now too it coincides with a birthday so it depends whether we are away or not 😉
Thank you Cathy – I am planning a trip to the supplier where I got this pot tomorrow – would you like one if there are any available? I think my Paperwhites flowered so quickly because the base of the greenhouse where I plant them is brick – the brick probably keeps them warmer than if they were stood in pots on the greenhouse bench.
Oops! I realise you mentioned going to your supplier ‘tomorrow’ ie today! It was a very kind thought but I suspect that if they did have them they would be a lot more than I would like to pay anyway 🙁 Perhaps I should just keep buying cheap and cheerful stuff at car boots or antique markets 🙂 Hope you had a successful visit anyway and stocked up on lots of goodies.
Prepare to be surprised Cathy – i paid the grand total of £3.50 and bought a spare just in case. If you email me your address I will pop it in the post when I get a suitable box from Amazon – you can pay me when we eventually get together – hopefully next year some time.
You could knock me down with the proverbial feather, Julie!! That would be lovely – and an early spring visit to Suffolk is definitely on the cards!
Excellent news!!
Just another thought – the supplier is a floristry warehouse – you can get all kinds of goodies in these places quite cheaply – I am sure if you google floristry supplies in your area there will be something similar. I also get lots of my stuff in charity shops & antique places – also Sainsbury’s does some good bits & pieces which get heavily reduced as the season goes on.
I love the way you display those Paperwhites. They always get so untidy and leggy if you leave them growing in their pots. Gorgeous, and the zinc pot is great too.