100 Flowers : #004 Greater Periwinkle

Now, this may seem a little unseasonal but in this mild and wet winter there are some plants that have just kept on going without a pause . . .

#004 : Vinca major

Greater Periwinkle 

I'm enjoying deciphering the botanical latin for the #100Flowers posts, this one is pretty straightforward . . .

Vinca : is from the latin 'vincere' which means 'to bind', the long trailing stems with evergreen leaves are perfect to use binding garlands and wreaths.

major : means 'greater' or 'larger' and distinguishes this plant from the smaller flowered periwinkle, Vinca minor.

The buds are furled like tiny umbrellas.

Take a closer look at the flowers, what elegant geometry! A golden circle in a pentagon, surrounded by five intriguingly asymmetric petals – like a fan or propeller.

Lines Written in Early Spring

by William Wordsworth in 1798

I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts,

in that green bower,

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;

And 'tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,

Their thoughts I cannot measure:-

But the least motion which they made

It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,

To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,

If such be Nature's holy plan,

Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man?

Worries about man messing up the natural world aren't new!

I'm putting all the #100Flowers on a Pinterest board, you can find it here.

Celia

xx

100 Flowers : #003 Sweet Box

It's interesting that so many winter flowering shrubs have highly scented flowers . . .

#003 : Sacococca hookeriana var. digyna

Sweet Box 

It would be easy to walk past this small rather uninteresting bush, were it not for the perfume that fills the space around it. The scent is hard to describe, it's sweet, heavy and can be overpowering if you bring a sprig or two indoors.

However outside in the garden the scent drifts around and dilutes, so you're not quite sure where it came from . . . did someone walk past wearing an expensive Parisian perfume?

The scent comes from these male flowers – clusters of stamens with tiny petals the size of pin heads at the base.

The female flowers are so tiny and insignificant it's hard to spot them . . .

 

Can you see the tiny green bulb-shaped embryo berries with two curved white stigmas emerging from the top – those are the female flowers. And it's the berries rather than the flowers that the botanical name describes . . .

Sarococca : sarkos means 'flesh' and kokkos means 'a berry'

hookeriana : is in honour of the botanist and director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Hooker (either Sir William Jackson Hooker or his son Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, no one seems to know which!)

digyna : di means 'two' and gyna means woman, refers to the female part or berry having two seeds.

I'm not sure I've ever seen berries on our Sweet Box. I wonder what pollinates the flowers?

Celia

xx

Back to her old tricks again

We have three hens that lay blue-green eggs, they are Araucana x Crested-Cream-Legbar hybrids and are named after spices – Saffron, Nutmeg and Ginger. We hadn't had a pastel coloured egg for many months, Saffron and Nutmeg had been moulting and Ginger . . . well dear Ginger-Spice, she stopped laying regularly 2 years ago, then laid the occasional egg and eventually in June 2013 she laid this – a teeny weeny egg containing nothing but egg white and a yucky grey blob.


Then, just after New Year's Day, I found a large pastel sage-green egg in the nest box. I assumed it was laid by Saffron-Spice, but the more I looked at the egg and thought about it, I realised it didn't look like Saffie's pale teal-blue pointy eggs. I picked up Saffie, her comb was still small and pale red and her pelvic bones were too narrow to lay an egg.

So who laid these . . . I spotted Ginger-Spice skipping down the ramp from the nests . . . yes indeed!

After well over a year, dear Ginger-Spice is regularly laying beautiful large sage-green eggs again.

It's very difficult to photograph Ginge' – she's got a new lease of life and is always dashing around . . .

. . . and she's even back to her old tricks :-)

Ginger was a very quick learner as a pullet and I taught her to do a little trick when I went to get the afternoon corn each day, but when Tarragon the Araucana cockerel came on the scene Ginge' gave up doing her trick. And when her egg-laying stopped she became bottom of the pecking-order and was often chased away from the feeders.


But LOOK! This is what now happens when I go into the feed shed . . .

Ginge' hops onto the little garden foot-stool and walks to the top, she waits and I give her a few grains of corn from my hand

then Ginge' hops onto my arm and we take a little stroll around the garden . . .

we have a little  chat and I admire her incredibly beautiful feathers . . .

which are like the glowing copper flames.



I've no idea what was the cause of Ginger's lost year, I'll just say it's great to have the old Ginge' and her beautiful eggs back again.


Celia
xx

100 Flowers : #002 Winter Honeysuckle

Thank you for the lovely comments after the first 100 Flowers blog post, I'll try to write a flower-post a couple of times a week through 2014.

Today, for Flower #002 I've chosen . . .

#002 : Lonicera fragrantissima

Winter Honeysuckle 

Winter Honeysuckle isn't a climber, but a rather large shrub that looks a bit like a scruffy bird's nest. In summer it is covered with bright green pairs of leaves, the tiny flowers appear in winter before the new leaves open. Why is it worth a place in the garden? – the clue's in the name . . . 

'fragrantissima' means 'most fragrant'

Today is the Feast of Epiphany, so I've chosen a flower that brings fragrance from the East . . . this most beautifully scented Honeysuckle was brought to England from China by the plant hunter Robert Fortune in 1845.

The fragrance that drifts from these tiny white flowers reminds me of lemon-drizzle cake, it is my special gift on this blustery and muddy first Monday of January.

Celia
xx

PS Follow all the 100 Flowers on my Pinterest Board.

100 Flowers : #001 Winter Jasmine

I mentioned that I'd had an idea for regular blogposts . . .

walking around our garden the other day I noticed quite a few flowers in bloom, I wondered how many different plants there were in the garden? did I remember all the names? did I even look at them closely when they flowered?

It sowed the seed of an idea . . . 100 Flowers flowering in our garden during 2014. A close look at 2, maybe 3 each week. A reminder of the botanical name and what it means. And maybe some other snippets of info.

The flowers will be blooming in the garden the day I write about them . . . 

2014 - a year of 100 Flowers

#001 : Jasminum nudiflorum

Winter Jasmine

'nudiflorum' means 'naked flower'

Winter Jasmine flowers on bare stems before the leaves open.

Today, when another Atlantic storm is raging over the British Isles and the sky went black, thunder rumbled and hail fell; the Winter Jasmine flowers glowed like bright stars.

I picked one stem to bring indoors and put it into my eggcup/vase/tiny cup made by Linda Bloomfield.

I found this poem by Cherry Zhai

Winter Jasmine

As every year
I see you again
It’s so cold, but you have already blossomed.
Why are you so impatient to come into bloom before the other flowers?
You are the flower touching me the most
How bright is your color!
Like the dazzling sunlight,
Gives us vigor,
Little yellow flowers,
Messenger of spring.

Celia
xx

PS I'm putting all the 100 Flowers on a Pinterest Board.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Here we are in day two of a new year . . . it feels a bit like the old one, but who knows what the coming months may bring?

This time last year I was keeping a secret - that there was going to be a feature about me in Country Living magazine the following December. I was busy working on my 'Garlands' Christmas card designs and waiting to hear from the photographer assigned to do the photo shoot.

This year I'm working on another secret commission (I've had to sign an NDA, so no peeping!) and I'm busy planning new designs for prints and cards . . . starting with the 2014 Valentines hares and birds.

Thank you to everyone who ordered cards from my etsy shop during November and December - especially if you found me via the Country Living article (if you missed the magazine, you can read it here). It got very busy and there were regular late evening packing sessions, after which I relaxed by sitting down and doing some knitting. But I must have been a bit tired, you would not believe how many times I un-ravelled and reknitted this shawl!

But it's done now and I blocked it at the weekend - TA-DAH!!!

The pattern is Halyard on Ravelry, I devised my own colour scheme for the stripes - those flipping stripes!!!! they look easy but take your eye off the task for a second and it's very easy to drop a stitch when you do a star-stitch! And what's more, fudging it and thinking it doesn't matter, won't work . . . believe me it won't work.

I dithered about doing the deep lace edging, thinking it may look a bit "Marie Antoinette" but I wanted to knit the lace pattern and was pleased I did . . . compared to the stripes it was a doddle.


SO . . . onward into 2014 . . . no resolutions as such, but I have got a plan to help me do regular blog posts through the year, all will be revealed in the next post.


Celia
xx

Merry Christmas!

I've made the stuffings and sauces and planned the cooking times... I've even done some work in the garden and pruned the grape vines! Now I can put my feet up, and have a cup of tea and a slice of stollen while I listen to the carols from King's (just up the road in Cambridge).

Wishing you all of you a peaceful and happy Christmas Day!

Thank you for following my adventures on Purple Podded Peas in 2013

If you're travelling stay safe this stormy Christmas.

Celia

xx

An interlude of calm at the turning of the year

. . . between the busyness of the pre-Christmas retail extravaganza and the cookathon of Christmas itself . . .

Although for me Christmas is actually a quiet time of year, now that the main focus of my work is selling my prints and cards (rather than working on projects for publishers) I am swept up in the pre-Chritsmas retail extravaganza - and that is well under way by October!

So now there is a little lull. The weather has been relatively mild with only slight frosts and no snow, but a procession of dramatic gales is sweeping across the UK. Here in East Anglia we get the tail end of them, brief periods of heavy rain and strong gusts followed by clear skies again.

This morning we drove to the Fens in bright sunshine under clear blue skies and set out for a walk. But soon the clouds rolled over us and rain fell . . .

. . . swiftly followed by a rainbow. 

As I was carefully picking my way around a muddy area by some fencing, I looked down and spotted a broken stick . . . NO! not a stick, it was an antler . . .

On all the walks I've done over the years I've wished to come across a shed antler and until today, I never had. This antler is quiet small, but beautifully tactile, I guessed it was from a Roe Buck – their mature antlers have 3 prongs, this one has 2 and knob lower down (near the palm of my hand) which means it's one of his second pair of antlers. A Roe Buck sheds his antlers in November and starts to grow the buds of the new antlers in December, he will be starting to grow his first full set this winter.

Near the end of our walk, Cliff spotted movement in a field of rough grass . . . I zoomed in with my camera . . .

Yes, a deer! But I was unsure what sort. Luckily it turned and I got some more close-ups . . .

Large black edged ears, a black muzzle and a white bottom. I'm familiar with a Roe Deer's auburn summer coat, but back home I did some research and this is definitely a Roe Deer with it's grey-brown winter fur.

I can't see any antler buds on its head and it has a large area of white fur beneath its small white tail, it is also fairly small (not much larger than a greyhound) - so this is probably a young female.

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year – from now the days will start to get longer . . . 

. . . and even though the coldest weather of the winter is yet to come and Spring is 3 months or more away, there is the a tiny hint of optimism in the air – here in our garden the snowdrops are already pushing their way through the decaying leaves.

Whatever Santa brings me for Christmas, I already have 2 lovely presents - a Roe Buck antler and I have mended ankles – thanks to excellent treatment, advice and special insoles from Nats-the-physio and Paul-the-Podiatrist . . . I'm enjoying inspiring winter walks once more :-)

I hope you can find time in the run up to Christmas for an interlude of calm between the storms.

Celia

xx

Inside the House of Made & Found

Saturday was the day we'd dreamed about and worked hard to make happen; Emma's cunning plan was about to become reality – but would it work? would people turn up and buy things?

I was very grateful that was offered a bed in the Made & Found house, for Friday night; so after supper I packed everything in the tardis and drove down to North London. Although it had been a long day, I set to and arranged my wares at one the end of the kitchen . . .

the brick fireplace was perfect for showing my Christmas cards

and the cards and unframed prints fitted onto a round table.

Saturday early morning was a flurry of activity, Val arrived with her woven willow and set up her stall in the conservatory.

Emma arranged a beautiful cabinet of her silver jewellery, made with precious gems and vintage treasures, in an antique cabinet in the hallway.

Also in the hall was Debbie's shimmering display of hand-dyed yarns.

There was more (but I somehow didn't take photos of them!) 
Karen, Lilli and Claire were in the sitting room; Tracy was in her own sewing room; and next to me in the kitchen was Linda.

Also in the kitchen was this delicious array of food baked by Miss Georgina Worthington . . . and yes it was as scrummy as it looks!

 Can you spot someone wearing golden shoes?

I wonder who it is?

Right from when the Made & Found house opened its doors at 10am, the rooms started to buzz with chatter . . . customers were soon buying things and we knew the cunning plan was working!

As the day progressed Twitter friends appeared and introduced themselves . . . some had driven a very long way to be there! In the cosy snug, impromptu crochet tutorials happened between complete strangers and Val taught people how to make stars . . . this is mine :-)

As the light faded outside the visitors drifted away and we had time to chat with each other and swap information and ideas; bartering and swapping took place too!

I came home with a woven willow tree, the softest most luxurious silk and camel yarn and a beautiful eggcup/vase/cup - all even more special because I know exactly who made them.

Thank you to everyone who came along - it wouldn't have been a success without you!

Maybe the Made & Found house will pop up somewhere else in the spring? 



Now I have boxes to unpack and new work to plan . . . and our own Christmas to think about!

Celia
xx

Cushions for MADE & FOUND on Saturday 7 December

This Saturday is the Made & Found sale of handmade goods in North London. I'll be selling framed and unframed prints as well as my cards... including the Christmas cards. But I thought that I should also have a few items to showcase my fabrics, so yesterday I got out the sewing machine and spent the day stitching.

With apologies for the rather rubbish photos, it is so gloomy and dark! this is the best I could manage taken outdoors!

I made two cushions . . .

With button details on the backs . . .

The Stone Hearts cushion has Sea Sprigs on the reverse and the Sea Hearts has Stone Sprigs . . .

I used some letter stamps to print name tapes and hand stitched them onto the backs . . .

. . . and signed them

It would be nice to spend the whole week sewing, but today I'm back in the studio framing prints.


I hope to meet some of you at Made & Found on Saturday

Celia
xx