As usual today I am linking up with Cathy at Rambling In The Garden to join in her challenge to find something from the garden to put in a vase every Monday.

This week I have to be honest and say that I did not venture out very far into my garden today – it has rained so hard throughout the day that I have stayed firmly indoors apart from a quick spell on the terrace when I managed to cut these flowers from surrounding pots and beds. Whilst I had planned to show my zinnias today, the purple buddleja has been attracting my attention as I watered my pots this week and could be cut without venturing out onto the grass.

Buddleja is one of those plants I rarely consider for a vase and yet it bears a strong resemblance to my favourite spring flower, lilac. If I had caught this buddleja a few weeks ago I could have produced a whole vase draped in long purple stems, but most had gone over today so the pickings were quite slim.

To fill out the vase I found cosmos, dahlias and a few stems of blackberries.

This cosmos is called ‘Psyche Rose Picotee’ and is performing extremely well in my pots close to the house. I am hoping it will carry on flowering for some time yet – until I am ready to plant up my bulbs in November if I am very lucky.

This has been a fantastic year for the fruit garden and these blackberries are no exception. Dark and juicy when ripe they are irresistible to both me and the birds!

This is Buddleja davidii ‘Black Knight’. Buddleja is, I feel, a very underrated flower in both the gardening and the arranging worlds. I might eat my words if it has collapsed in the morning, but tonight it is still looking very happy in my vase. It is fragrant, comes in a variety of lovely shades, grows well in all weather conditions and can be cut back almost to the ground in late winter. On top of all that the butterflies love it and I am very happy to give a number of plants a home in my garden. If these flower stems perform well I am also going to make a point of bringing it inside more often in future.

I also added a few wet stems of dahlia ‘Purple Gem’ to fill out my quick vase today. This is a dahlia that I grow every year as it is very reliable and a beautiful colour.

So there you have it – a rather wet collection of blooms on this, a rather wet last day of August. I hope that you have had better weather where you are and that you will join me in popping over to Cathy’s blog to see what she and the others have made this week.

Tomorrow is the first day of September and, as promised, I will be back with the first of my new series of seasonal inspirations – I am looking forward to sharing with you a few of the things that make September a special month for me.