In A Vase On Monday – Sweet Pea Success & A Winner

Welcome to this weeks In A Vase On Monday when 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 for the house every week of the year.

As I have only just returned from my trip away to Lancashire with my mother, today has been spent unpacking and catching up on jobs so there was very little time for vase making. Had my day been more leisurely there are plenty of contenders this week – beautiful white and lilac lavender, the white pom poms of viburnum opulus sterile, stunning purple globes of allium Purple Sensation, the first bearded iris and, perhaps most exciting of all, Lily of the Valley. I say most exciting not because I prefer it to the other beautiful May flowers, but because I have been trying for 5 years to get it to establish in my garden and this year it finally looks as though it is starting to spread! As time was so short however, I headed to the greenhouse and cut a big bunch of sweet peas – what a treat!

I cut my first small bunch just before I went away and they have really come on in the last week – there will be a bunch in the kitchen now on a daily basis.

These are the Winter Sunshine seeds that I set off in late September last year. As they are both early to flower and growing under cover I can have lovely sweet peas that are not covered in the pollen beetles that plague my outdoor flowers.

I only took a couple of photos today as time was short, but I will make sure to take plenty more and name the varieties for you very soon.

Now on to the Giveaway I announced last week. Thank you so much to all who entered – I am very grateful to you all for following and really wish you could all be winners! I am pleased to announce that Elizabeth Davey is this weeks winner – please email me with your address details Elizabeth and I will get the book in the post to you. Thank you so much for all your lovely comments – I only had very limited internet access last week, so I will be responding to everyone over the next couple of days.

Last week was quite an exciting week for me. Not only did I manage to meet up with Sarah from Simply By Arrangement, I was also featured on the Makelight blog, had my first Cutting Garden post published on the Sarah Raven blog and had my photo featured as part of the #inspiredbypetals Instagram gallery hosted by Jannel Ford – such a lot to be celebrated in just one week!

I have long been a Bronte fan and am enjoying reading a book of their letters at the moment. Despite spending my childhood living very close to Haworth where they lived I had never visited the Parsonage that was their home. This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Bronte and I was both delighted and intrigued to see photos appearing on FaceBook and Instagram of lovely floral arrangements in the rooms of the Parsonage. These were created by a group of ladies attending a course held in the Old School Rooms organised by Simply By Arrangement. Do take a look at their lovely website which is full of inspiration and if you live in the Yorkshire/Lancashire area they organise a variety of interesting floral courses. I contacted Sarah and arranged to meet her after paying a visit to the Parsonage. We spent a lovely couple of hours sitting in her sunny garden getting to know each other over tea and cake – I am keeping my fingers crossed that she will be able to visit me sometime soon so that we can carry on with our flowery chat.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I would be writing a monthly guest blog post on the Sarah Raven blog Garlic and Sapphire. My first post was about my Cutting Garden in May if you would like to take a look. I am much more restricted by the length of my posts on that blog than I am here, but hope to keep you up to date with the monthly changes in my cutting garden over there.

I have mentioned Emily Quinton and her Makelight photography courses many times before. I love what Emily does and really enjoy being part of her Makelight Community – a very supportive group of ladies all interested in improving their photography. Imagine both my surprise and delight when a member of Emily’s team got in touch and said they would like to run a feature about me on their blog. They are concentrating on all things floral this month so felt that what I do was a great fit. You can have a look here.

As if all that was not enough on Friday I noticed that my photo had been included in a grid on Instagram. I follow a beautiful feed by @jannelford and often tag my images to appear in her #inspiredbypetals gallery. I included an image of lilac last week and was delighted when she featured it on her feed as part of a weekly grid of her favourite images. If you are not on Instagram I highly recommend that you set up an account and join in the fun. Do let me know in the comments below if you are on Instagram – leave your link and we can all take a look at your gallery. For anyone unfamiliar with my Instagram feed you can have a look here.

Well that was a lot of links for one night!! After all that excitement it is back to the weeding for me! Also I need to do battle with the rooks – I have come home to find that they have been busy pulling out all the seedlings I planted before I went away as well as pulling up my first radishes. I will be going out with some big nets in the morning to try and cover everything up for a few weeks.

I hope you have a lovely week ahead of you and please do pop over to Cathy’s blog to see what she and the others have made this week.

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