Welcome to this weeks Monday Flowers, when as usual I am linking up with Cathy at Rambling In The Garden to join in with her challenge to find something from the garden to put in a vase in the house every week of the year.

This week is proving to be very busy – not quite the quiet respite after the Christmas celebrations that I had imagined. I had a quick plan for this weeks vase which was to cut the last of my greenhouse chrysanthemums and float them in a large bowl. Rushing out to the greenhouse at lunchtime whilst the sun was shining, I was dismayed to find that the chrysanthemums were covered in greenfly – not a problem usually associated with December! As I did not want to transfer the greenfly to the house I was left both short of time and without a plan this week. Rather than not join in at all I have decided to have a quick look back at previous festive vases.

Chrysanthemums

This vase from 2014 was made with the chrysanthemums that I was planning to use today, but this years flowers are much smaller (hence my plan to float them) and now covered with greenfly so have been quickly relegated to the compost heap. Following my knee injury in September I was unable to look after my chrysanthemums properly as they came into flower – I would usually be feeding and disbudding them in October and November, which is why I think they have been disappointing. I have read that a few bloggers are also disappointed with their chrysanthemums this year though, so perhaps it was just a bad year for them.

Christmas-Rose

Above and below are two more arrangements that I could not repeat this year. I have plenty of helleborus orientalis in flower,  yet despite the warm weather  there is not a single helleborus niger flower to be seen . I have had plenty of these beautiful pristine white flowers in December for the last three years, so I am amazed to see no signs of flowering so far this year. I have no idea why my helleborous niger plants have let me down so badly!

Christmas-Rose

I hope that you are all enjoying the holiday period and looking forward to welcoming the new year. Things have been a little patchy here at Peonies & Posies since September, but I will be working on getting this new site running smoothly once the celebrations have finished and will be back with lots of chat about seed sowing, snowdrops, hellebores and garden plans in January.

I look forward to seeing you again next week and hope you will pop over to Cathy’s blog to see what she and the others have produced for their last vases of 2015!

I wish all of my lovely readers a very happy 2016!!