Getting There At Last

Things have been late this year – four to five weeks, I’d say.  But the last couple of weeks of sunshine have brought things on and morale is high again. And, skipping over the fact that today looks like November again, the field is now looking a bit more like it should. Every day, something new starts to flower, quite often things you’d forgotten you had.  Not a bad place to work!

Today

I didn’t have my decent camera on me, so the photos are quick snaps on my mobile, but you have to see these colours! It’s a fine time of year…

Bulb Giveaway

Freesias are one of those things that I grow every year but am never happy with. I follow all the instructions and coo over them in the polytunnel but they are never as good or as bountiful as I would like and I’ve always assumed that they were a bit tricy. Then, last year, a grower friend said that she’d grown them outside and they were fantastic, so this year I’m trying again – outside and uncooed-over.

If you’d like to join my efforts, the lovely people at Spalding Plant & Bulb Co have given me a pack of 50 mixed freesia bulbs to give away. If you’d like them, email me on info@jwblooms.co.uk. The first person to do so will receive a pack of 50 bulbs. Don’t forget to include your name and postal address!

Get Weaving (Again)

The week before last we had a couple of sunny days… I was tempted to leave it there, on the assumption that such startling news would be enough to satisfy most of you. But for those of you made of sterner stuff, I thought I’d add a quick tutorial, showing you how I weave the willow hoops we decorate and hang from the roofs at big-barn weddings.

For the purposes of this tutorial, I will – in the best tradition of garden writers – be assuming that you have bags of room to work in and unlimited access to materials, in this case preferably a willow fedge that needs cutting back. If, weirdly, you don’t grow rows and rows of willow, you can buy bundles of withies from suppliers such as the excellent Musgrove Willows.

Step one is to cut some withies. This time of year is great, as the willow is still flexible but not yet covered in annoying leaves and side shoots. How thick the withies should be depends on the size of the hoop you’re aiming for – thinner is easier to manipulate, but too thin and you’ll be there till Christmas. I was weaving a 4ft hoop and used a bundle of pussy willow of varying widths:

Step two is to create a kind of mini stonehenge the size of your hoop. I used a piece of string and a central marker and banged in short wooden stakes to make a circle. Remember, you will be weaving round the outside of the wooden stakes so if you’re after an exact size, make the guide a bit smaller than the final size.

Next, take two or three long withies and place them round the outside of your woodhenge. Tie them together to form a circle, making sure that they fit the henge snugly – this is where your shape is established and any inadvertent bulging will be difficult to get rid of later.

Now you’re ready to get weaving! Take a nice long piece of willow and wind it round the circle you just made, tucking the thick end inside a wooden peg to brace it. Take your next withy and, starting at the next wooden stake along, weave it round in the same direction, wrapping the new withy round what you’ve already done. If the withies are a bit stiff, run your thumb down the inside to soften them up a bit. Start the next withy at the next stake and so on.

When you’ve been round all the stakes once, it should look something like this:

At this stage, I go round with wire or string to just hold everything in place. I think real weavers would be appalled by this but our hoops are going to be high up and covered, so it won’t show.

Basically, now you just keep going round and round until you have the thickness you require. As you go on, it gets quicker as the withies start to align themselves into neat grooves. As the hoop becomes more rigid, too, you can take it off the wooden guide without risking it losing its shape, which makes things much easier.

If you’re going to be hanging them, the hoops need to be quite thick or they’ll flop about. On the other hand, life is short and sticking in a couple of cross struts to make them look like cartwheels does the same job in half the time. When you’ve finished, go round again with the string or wire if you think it needs it and cut off any sticky-out bits on a sharp angle.

And – voila! – that’s it! This is what I ended up with:

And this is the finished result hanging in the Medieval Tithe Barn at Haselbury Mill. If you’re going to be hanging yours over the dining room table, you might want fewer storeys.

A couple of final tips:

• Although I did these on grass, doing it on bare earth or a well-mown lawn is preferable as long grass tends to get woven in along with the willow, which is deeply annoying.
• Fresh-cut willow is very boingy – watch your eyes (if that’s even possible).
• Try not to kneel on your secateurs.

Let me know how you get on!

 

Flower-Growing and the Crotchless Pant

In 1984 I went to China. Apparently these days the cities, at least, are pretty much as you’d expect in any developed country – lined with skyscrapers and littered with Starbucks – but in those days it was all bicycles, Mao suits and people walking into lampposts as they gawped at the funny white woman.

I say all Mao suits but that’s not strictly true. The adults were a sea of navy or khaki-green but the babies, treasured and displayed like trophies, were in bright, happy colours with these brilliant trousers, attached at the waist band, but open round the crotch. Not as revealing as it sounds – or the picture suggests – because they were also so thickly padded that when the babies weren’t crouched down (usually for a wee in the gutter), the trousers joined in the middle and the “crotchless” feature disappeared completely.

I was reminded of the Chinese baby trousers last week as I was getting mugged up against the cold. Lately my basic outfit has been woolly tights, one pair of normal socks, one pair of Welly-boot socks, vest, two long-sleeved T-shirts, one short-sleeved T-shirt, fleece and jeans. Over all that, when I get to the field, I put on overalls, waterproof coat, hat, scarf, fingerless mittens and gardening gloves.

And then I remember I should have gone to the loo.

Not so dim, these Chinese. This is me. Stylish, non?

First Newsletter

For those of you who haven’t already been harangued, below is a link to my first proper newsletter. As with all these computer things, my brain almost exploded in the process of getting it right.

I’m sure there was a time when I used to be quite bright…

eepurl.com/u_n7H

If you’d like to get the next one sent to you, please add your name and email here.

Floret Flower Farm

Those of you who used to follow this blog regularly (in those long-ago times when I wrote it regularly) may have gleaned a few insights into me and my life as a flower-grower. On the whole – and probably slightly annoyingly – I am delighted with my chosen career and I hope I have managed to convey a little of the barely-containable joy it gives me, particularly very early on a sunny morning, when the flowers are upright and full of moisture and so incredibly perfect that I wonder if they can possibly be the ones I grew.

Mind you, you’ve probably also realised that, like the best of flowers, I am prone occasionally to wilt. This job is incredibly hard work and I am, let’s face it, old and knackered. My field is a good ten minutes’ drive from where I live (apologies to those of you who endure an hour’s farty squash on the Tube every morning) and on a cold morning in January, it can be  hard to wrench my self-employed backside from my toasty-warm bed and out into the cold. These are the days when I look at my Floret photos.

For those of you who don’t know, Floret Flower Farm in Washington is THE MOST BEAUTIFUL (scientifically proven fact) flower farm in the world. Just look at that picture above. I mean, LOOK!!! Erin Benzakein’s flowers are gorgeous, her arrangements stunning, her husband and children seemingly perfect and, for a farmer, she always looks lovely and clean.* I should hate her. But, of course, I don’t. In fact, so impressed by her am I, that I frequently have to stop myself getting on a flight to Seattle with the sole aim of stalking her.

On top of that, looking at pictures of other growers’ apparently perfect plots and lifestyles (yes, Sarah Raven, I’m looking at you) normally depresses the hell out of me, whereas Erin’s pictures make me burn to get going. With that in mind, tonight I was re-reading some of her blog archives, hoping to find a new energy and maybe some recommendations for varieties that I haven’t yet grown, when I came across this (scroll down to March 11th). I remember Belinda from Wild Acre mentioning it to me a couple of years ago, but at the time I wasn’t familiar with Erin’s work so didn’t think too much about it, but stumbling upon it again last evening left me thrilled and I have woken up beaming again this morning.

If you haven’t already seen it, take a look at her recently updated website and in particular her Flickr feed. I recommend her blog, too – best read over cornflakes and coffee.

* And if I were to wear those slightly chintzy aprons, I’d look like Les Dawson in drag, but she just looks a bit boho. How do people do that?

A Change In The Season

What? The seasons change, you say? Yeah, right. If you’d asked me yesterday, I would have said the season hadn’t changed since November.

I’m afraid you’ll have to indulge me here as, before we get to the photos, I just need to have a quick rant about this so-called summer. I know we’ve all been suffering but, as a grower, I feel I have been uncommonly punished by the appalling weather. Quite apart from the toll it wreaks on the flowers and the extra effort it demands in every aspect of the job from sowing to harvest, it has completely robbed me of the conviction that my job is better than anybody else’s! I am grieving for those days in previous seasons when the traffic-free hush of the early morning, the dewy perfection of the new blooms  and the promise of a beautiful day to come made picking, and life as a flower-grower, such a joy. This year, picking has seemed more like a wrestling bout with the wind and the rain – oh, the endless, ceaseless, unremitting rain* – and I am really, really, missing feeling utterly smug of a morning.

Anyway, that was yesterday. Today, the sun actually came out – not like it has in the east apparently, but enough for me to regret having worn socks** – and all is right with the world again. And the colours of this weekend’s weddings made me realise that the seasons are indeed ticking over as normal. The days of pale pinks and peonies are well behind us.

I love these colours. For years, I have been trying to find a paint that perfectly captures the orange of crocosmias to no avail. And then there’s the seedheads, and the grasses, and the dahlias, and… Well, see what you think.

* Talking of which,  when is somebody going to invent a hood that turns with your head? Is it too much to ask not to have to work blinkered?

** Yes, socks! In August!

A Right Hoopla

Have you ever tried weaving a couple of 6ft-diameter willow hoops, lashing them to the top of your smallish van and driving somewhat wobbly-ly down a packed A303 during the holiday season? I have. Still wondering how we didn’t get stopped by the police – or at least dragged down the dual carriageway by a caravan we’d inadvertently got ourselves hooked onto.

When I first discussed ideas with Gemma and Kelvin in the ancient barn at Lower Stockbridge Farm where they were planning to get married, I was a little disappointed that they didn’t want massive flower globes (I still have to stop myself calling them hanging balls) dangling from the fabulous, chunky beams. The barn is huge – it needed something. “I could weave some hoops, which we could decorate with lots of dangly bits and hang them horizontally,” I suggested breezily. They looked interested. “How big would you want them to be?” “Six foot across?” said the groom. “No problem!” I replied.

Hmmm….

So it was that we spent yesterday tying and lashing and measuring and re-measuring and re-tying and finally hoisting one 4ft and two 6ft floral hoops up to the roof. I took a few snaps – they’re not very good and don’t convey at all well just how high the beams were, but they’ll give you an idea. I’m hoping for some better photos from the official photographers, ones I can put on the website to persuade more people to go down the hanging hoop route. That’s if I ever get them home, of course.

I Have A New Camera!

Yes, after years of snapping wildly at my flowers with an old so-cheap-you-know-you’re-going-to-regret-it Argos special, I have taken the plunge and bought a proper camera. It was expensive (for me anyway – I am innately reluctant to spend money on what I, deep down, feel is nothing more than a gadget) but it was long overdue. When your business is about creating a look, not having any decent pictures seems somewhat remiss.

Anyway, having done the deed, I am determined to a) not get dirt in it* and b) learn how to use it properly. I look at the blogs of people like Belinda at Wild Acre and Erin at Floret Flower Farm and I find their pictures both beautiful and, more importantly, inspiring. I only hope that one day I will be able to take such magical images.

So far, all I’ve done is play around with the buttons. I am at heart a manual-reader – I like to start at page 1 and work my way through it, but the idea that I’ll get the time to do that this side of Christmas seems farcical right now. One of the things I’ve been trying to do is highlight a flower and leave the background blurred. If it’s worked at all, it has been more by luck than judgment, but one thing I’ve learnt, and been delighted by, is how it also obscures the waist-high nettles in the background. Yay! Not a bad start.

*You would understand why that gets top priority if you saw my van.