And We’re Back…

Well, I’ve finally got my head round updating the website – some more recent photos (all totally clickable) and an additional gallery. I wasn’t sure what to put in the latter. At first I was going to keep it to photos of the finished product, thinking of it as my shop window. But then I added some of the field in case people are also interested in how I get there (the finished product, that is, not the field – nobody wants to know that*). But if they are, maybe I should add some which are a bit more warts-and-all. Do people really want to know about the mud and the weeds and the plastic-bottle cloches? Will that make me look honest and down-to-earth, or just amateurish?

Opinions, please.

*Van, occasionally bike.

And In Complete Contrast To Last Week’s Wedding…

..This week’s was pale pinks and blues and those beautiful, but ridiculously-expensive, matt ribbons you get from John Lewis.

I can do the growing and the floristry but what I can’t do after two 18-hour days of hard work is stand on top of a 10ft ladder with a heavy but fragile hanging ball of flowers in one hand, while hunting under the canvas for somewhere to tie it to with a secure-enough-not-to-kill-anybody knot with the other. So huge thanks to MHASTASFGDE (More-Help-And-Support-Than-A-Smalltime-Flower-Grower-Deserves Erica)* for doing all the hard bits.

And big thanks, too, to Wivvy Jan** who spent yesterday morning helping me prepare, despite having been at work till 2am the previous night. ***

Right, bed.

* Natty acronym, no?

** As opposed to me, White Van Jan.

*** I only took this pic because it looked so ridiculously idyllic. This is not in any way a true representation of what preparing for a wedding is like.

I Can’t Bring Myself To Say ‘Boutonniere’.

I love buttonholes. I love the way they are becoming more like little posies on your lapel and how young blokes, those who have never really known a time when it wasn’t done to moisturise, embrace wearing arrangements that would once have elicited talk of pansies – and not in the horticultural sense.

And I love brides who want their flowers bright!

Meddling

The next few weeks are going to be busy – packed with weddings, fairs, meetings and post-it notes on the fridge reminding me to eat. I am not good with stress, being by nature a flapper (not the cloche-hat type) and naturally shaky of hand. At the height of a panic, you can often find me muttering to myself – not because I’m about to have a breakdown so much as because I need to keep telling myself to slow down and stop worrying about things that might never happen. (Neither message sinks in, of course.)

But worse than the rush is the anticipation of the rush.

A few days ago a friend pointed out to me that you couldn’t  click on the photos on my website to expand them to a size where you could actually see what the flowers were like. So, acknowledging that he was absolutely right and in an attempt to distract myself from meddling with my to-do lists, I started to update it. Big mistake! I have completely mucked it up, can’t work out how to get it to do what I want and can’t get it back to how it was.  And I don’t know when I’ll have time to sort it out (especially as - on top of everything! - the Apprentice is now calling to me from the iPlayer…). So if you have arrived here from my Under Construction page, apologies. Please scroll down through the blog posts to see some pics – ones that click into proper big ones!