Flowers and a cat update.

May I heartily recommend these flowers as something to grow in your garden if you have room. They are sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis), self-sown from a couple of plants I bought from the market about 5 years ago for 75p each - they've been spreading around gradually and this year I had a bed half-full of them, all for free! I'm sure you must be able to grow them from seed though, well worth it as they should just keep on self-sowing. They are in mixed purple, white and paler purple and are gently scented. But what I hadn't realised was what fantastic cut flowers they make.

These ones have been in the vase two weeks already with petals gently dropping occasionally but still going strong - often flowers taken from the garden can last a disappointingly short time but these have been brilliant. The ferny thing with them we inherited with the garden, I think it's a kind of Thalictrum but whatever it is it's lasted just as well as the rocket.

Other cheery flowers at the moment are these beautiful roses (and Fairtrade, didn't know you could get Fairtade ones) given to me by a friend for my birthday:

I've never had enough to properly fill my grandmother's rose bowl before and it was really nice to put them in it. Monty draped himself around the arrangement for added decoration.

Leo is obsessed with chewing plants, so nibbled on all the ends of any green parts of the roses. He's had to be banned from the front porch, where I have an artificial flower arrangement, because he was chewing the plastic grass and then being sick. Plastic grass. Thought cats had more sense. It's in the bin now. (And yes I had provided a bit of real grass to chew as well, because I'm never quite sure if they need something in grass, although that made him sick too!)
They are settling in well, we have covered our sofas with a ridiculous array of mis-matched throws to protect it, and they seem to be learning to use the scratching post, which shakes when Monty sharpens his claws because he is SO big and strong.

Leo is very helpful and tends to stay with me in the day - here he is helping with filing papers.

He tried to help with cake-making too but I got him a bit floury by cuddling him half way though.

So they are both slowly becoming part of the family and Leo particularly is very affectionate now, which is lovely although of course I miss Archie's cuddles because he was such an unusually snuggly cat, but I think Leo may well be similar one day.

Finally, some words of advice from one of my birthday cards, surely we should all follow this as a matter of principle in any circumstances we may find ourselves in:

Proper tea in the garden

I have to start by saying this is not how I live my life! I think it's the first and only time ever that I have bothered to make such an effort with a drink, I tend to whizz as quickly as possible from one thing to the next and find it difficult not to be doing something all the time, and the thought of sitting still and doing nothing makes me feel strange and fidgety. And I never bother to set the table for a cup of tea like this when it's just me, or two of us.

But then if I don't make an effort to have space in my day to stop, think and appreciate what I have got then my day is emptier, it just becomes a list of chores to get through.
So I am going to try and do this more often. It was such a beautiful afternoon and we'd had a busy day so it was lovely to stop and pick some flowers from the garden. Can you spot who suddenly came to join me, just for a fleeting moment:

Must love wallflowers as much as I do! The beautiful deep, velvety red is one of my favourites.

The china cup, saucer and milk jug are my latest e-bay purchases.

I have been wanting some proper tea cups for a while but it took me a while to find some I liked - these are apparently from the 50s and are made by Colclough, which I'd never heard of- very pale green and very pretty, and I'm not sure what's come over me really because I'm not a flowery or pretty china person at all. I bought some more today, on e-bay again, and they've got flowers on, so I must be having some kind of a personality change. Once I'd put my tablecloth on the table and laid everything out it felt like being in a cafe for tea!

The garden is at its best right now, it never quite regains this level of promise and colour again.


It's a long thin garden with a veg patch at the end and it gets progressively messier and weedier the further you get from the house. I'm busy sowing some summer-flowering annuals but it really is best in the spring and it was lovely to come down this morning to see the sun shining through the leaves and tulips.