I was standing in the garden yesterday afternoon trimming the ivy prunings from the next stage of removal of the ivy tree into smaller pieces, when it occurred to me that using some of them in a vase would be a worthwhile gesture, a recognition of the beauty of the deep bluey-black ivy berries and a kind of swansong for the ivy tree and the impact the structure as a whole had on the garden. With the quantity cut over the two days there would probably have been enough for a hundred vases, but I sorted out a generous pile and headed into the house, snipping a couple of stems of fragrant Sarcococca hookeriana ‘Winter Gem’ on the way, for a touch of lightness amidst the dark.
Choosing one of my Caithness Glass Ebony vases, there were enough stems to be self-supporting in the wide neck and essentially they were just plonked in, with the sarcococca
added last. This vase requires a lot of material and doesn’t often get used, so I was pleased to take this opportunity to do so. I could brazely pretend the little fluffy pile is made up of swang down, but it isn’t, it’s goose down from one of a pair of pillows that I am recycling, gradually adding the contents to the compost heap.
Would you like to join us on IAVOM today? Just find material from your garden and pop it into some sort of receptacle and share it with us by adding links to and from this post – thinking out of the box is actively encouraged!
I tried hard to be selective in choosing my five favourites for the meme hosted by Cathy of Words and Herbs, but it proved impossible to narrow it down to five. Having deliberately planned for winter interest in the garden, everything here has something valuable to offer in the leaner months of the year and there is no way I could choose between them.
Spring was definitely in the air today, with temperatures above 13°C and hints of sunshine, encouraging snowdrops and crocus to open, and bringing the occasional sound of bees collecting early nectar. This was not the case last Sunday, however, when it rained for most of the day and kept all but 22 visitors away from our open garden. Those who came enjoyed the event and most had already been at least once before and obviously felt it was worth another visit, which is always good to hear. Despite the low numbers we still raised nearly £350, aided by donations after the event and several purchases by a neighbour of named snowdrops, each costing at least £15, and although this made it worthwhile we were more than happy to put the house back to rights and have the garden back to ourselves.
Often after a garden opening I have photographed some of the table posies to feature in my vase on Monday the following day; today, in my effort to leave as little as possible to be done on the Sunday, I picked and photographed one of the required posies on Saturday, which is what we have today, in this short IAVOM post. A sprig of pink posy willow, Salix gracilistyla ‘Mount Aso’, several common snowdrops Galanthus nivalis, and a few Crocus tomassinianus.
Each time we open the garden, I try to make sure there is time to sit down in the morning before visitors are due to arrive, as there will be no chance later, and certainly no time for a cup of tea; invariably, however, this doesn’t happen. There will always be things that can only be done on the day, like taking cakes out of the freezer, moving our cars away from the house and setting up the entrance and plant tables, whilst some things will be weather dependent, like putting cushions on the benches and information signs in the garden.
Apologies in advance to any arachnophobes reading this, as a spider and its eight legs creep into the post in the title, the vase and the prop!
The vase is a small green glass one with a fluted rim, and the whole arrangement (plonkment, more like) is around 11″ tall (28cm). The prop is my metal spider, normally gracing a spot in the ‘bus shelter’, next to a ‘Spiders Keep Out’ sign: is it blushing? Hard to tell, but it does seem to be trying to camouflage itself against the darkness of the vase, perhaps embarrassed being thrust into the limelight.
With just over a week to go till our February opening, we are now down to the nitty-gritty of last minute jobs, mostly little things that could have been done ages ago but haven’t, like finding homes for various oddments that have been sitting about, or refixing things that have come adrift. The cakes are all baked, and the Golfer has begun the last bit of sweeping and path clearing which I had especially left for him to do as I had done all the rest. I have decided to create some additional signs with the names of plants that we always get asked about – like Wordless Wednesday’s leucojum and the source of fragrances like sarcococca – but it won’t take long to print and laminate them. The one thing we have no control of is the weather and it has continued to rain, resulting in localised flooding in several directions, which, if still in place in a week’s time, will make things difficult for visitors, especially those who do not know the area. Que sera sera and all that…!
The idea behind today’s vase came from reading 
The vase is from my collection of the Caithness Glass Ebony series, with its wide neck, and I have mixed and matched not only the contents but fabric in the prop, which is one of several vintage patchwork quilts I have acquired over the years from antique fairs and markets. I have done some patchwork myself many years ago when, as a teenager, I made a long bias cut patchwork skirt; sadly, I don’t seem to have time for needlework of any sort these days.
Rambling in the Garden 