Dear Readers,

I must start with a very heartfelt apology for my long absence. As you will probably have guessed all has not been rosy here in the Peonies & Posies garden for some time now. Having taken our family holiday to Florida back in August, I returned full of blogging plans to find my mother in ill health. Sadly the situation is on going for the time being. Whilst I am doing my best to keep on top of my gardening jobs, something had to give and that something has been my photography and blogging.

Having not joined in with In A Vase On Monday for so many weeks I was determined to take part today but yet again found myself without the time to cut and photograph a few flowers. So instead of a vase that I made myself,  I have decided to treat you to a lovely arrangement made and photographed by a very talented flowery friend with flowers picked from my garden.

Photo-By-Moss-&-Stone.jpg

This beautiful arrangement was made by Brigitte from Moss & Stone. Brigitte and I have only met very recently, after being introduced via Instagram through a mutual Instagraming friend – what a wonderful community Instagram is! You can catch up with Brigitte and her lovely life with her adorable puppy and kitten and her very beautiful garden on her daily Instagram feed.. Brigitte loves to arrange flowers in a wild and romantic style and she runs courses from her beautiful home where you can learn to recreate her individual style.

This arrangement is made up of a few unnamed dahlias, blue cornflowers, red amaranthus, verbena, cosmos Double Click Cranberry and a few late roses. All these are still flowering beautifully in my plot, although I am expecting the show will end quite soon as the temperatures drop and the daylight recedes.

I am working hard in whatever spare time I can salvage to prepare my garden for winter. The cutting bed borders are gradually being cleared and tidied and replanted with a selection of bulbs and biennials that I managed to sow back in June. In the greenhouse I have planted my chrysanthemums into the greenhouse bed, my winter variety sweet pea seeds have been sown and germinated and I will be planting my first batch of Paperwhite bulbs very soon. I still need to sow a few trays of hardy annual seeds, but otherwise I am on top of the greenhouse timetable. Outside there are plenty of biennials to transplant, I will be starting to  plant tulip bulbs in November and I need to order some garlic and shallots to plant for next years vegetable crops. I am also planning to sow some broad beans and pea seeds to grow outside throughout the winter (although I always have mixed success with these).

I am very sorry for my prolonged absence and hope that I will be back here sharing photos and gardening stories with you very soon. In the meantime thank you to Cathy from Rambling In The Garden for this lovely meme which I am greatly missing taking part in – do pop over to her blog to see what she and the others have made this week.

Thank you also to Brigitte for sharing her lovely photo with me – she would be delighted if you would pop over to her Instagram feed and say hi.

Please do say hi to me too if you have the time – I have not been able to comment on blogs or keep up with all my blog reading recently, but I do miss everyone and would hate to lose touch!

Julie xx