After work yesterday evening I decided to cut some flowers for the house, it’s not just rhododendron and azaleas that are at their peak, the lilac (syringa) and a number of other flowering shrubs, lily of the valley, aquilegia and bleeding hearts are all beautiful. I ended up with 4 vases full of flowers. This is our reward for the winter… 

I haven’t tried cutting rhododendron before, let’s see how long it lasts for. The advantage of cutting flowers is you really start to notice the details. I had not really see the little delicate dab of yellow in these before.

I have an ambivalent view of lilac. On the one hand I love the beautiful exuberant flowers with their extravagant scent at his time of year, on the other hand the shrub itself can require a lot of maintenance, putting up whip like suckers at the least opportunity that require removing to maintain a nice shape and optimise flowering. The tree at the front of our house is ancient according to the previous owners but has been really well maintained, it has the most gorgeous double flowers in tight clusters.

We also have a rather unusual small leaved lilac with mini-flowers that has produced overwhelming amounts of blossom this year, absolutely gorgeous in combination with a shrub I have yet to identify but is similar to weigela.

I also decided to experiment with some of the more cottage garden flowers in this vase, see which you can identify! 

I particularly like these bleeding hearts, they are a superb woodland type plant and seem to work well in as a cut flower. I’m not sure how long any of these will last as cut flowers, I hope for a week. 

Finally, as I promised myself yesterday I plucked a small posy of lily of the valley (convallaria), combined with bluebells and a few florets I had left over. 

So that is my morning meditation done. 

Back to work…