Tulips are my favourite cut flowers, and as soon as I see them in the supermarket, I bring home a bouquet. I love the fluidity of tulips- these grew at least an inch since I placed them in the vase, and this time they stayed upright (that doesn’t always happen!)
I usually take photos of flowers on a white background, but decided this time to play around with a dark one. A brown throw blanket made a perfect draped background for the bright yellow colour of the petals, and the resulting photos remind me of the Dutch Golden Age still life paintings. The perfect subject for an oil painting!
This is slowly and unintentionally turning into a flower blog…. there are just so many beautiful flowers in my mom’s garden all bursting into glorious colour, though, and I can’t resist indulging myself in taking tons of photos of them! And then, of course, cutting some of the blooms and bringing them indoors to enjoy. Peonies are probably my favourite flowers (if I had to choose just one), but the bad part about them is the bugs also love them. So, you always have to shake all of them off otherwise you inadvertently bring a million tiny beetles into the house. But that extra work is worth it, because they smell heavenly!
I love these dark pink ones, since they fade to light pink as they open. They are almost all gone now: short lived, but so enjoyable.
White peonies aren’t my favourite variety, but this variety with the dark magenta centre is so vibrant that I do enjoy them. They are difficult to take pictures of, though.
We have several more peony blooms that haven’t opened yet- one new variety called “Raspberry Sundae” that I’m so excited to see. I’ll try to get some photos to post here…and then photos of all of the other flowers that are blooming right now too.
What flowers are blooming where you live? What is your favourite flower?
Lilacs are one of those flowers that are best enjoyed outside on the hedge…but I just can’t resist cutting a bouquet to bring inside! Their large, bouncy blooms are perfect for creating wild, abundant bouquets.
If you cut lilacs and either smash the stems or cut them vertically, they are supposed to last longer, but I didn’t have much luck getting these to last more than a day. But, even if the blooms only last a day or two, it’s still worth it to enjoy their beautiful scent wafting through the house.
And apparently the conditions were perfect this year for lilacs, because we got two full weeks of lovely, scented blooms to enjoy. And when the first bouquet wilted, I just went and cut another!
Do you have lilac bushes, or access to some? Have you had any luck getting lilac bouquets to last longer?
Hello Dear Readers, how was your week? It’s been a while since I did a Social Saturday post, so I thought I should do one today, since I’ve got a few collected pictures.
The greenhouses are open so I picked up a Coleus, below, and my mom some pansies, above. I love the colours of the leaves on this one! I’m going to plant this in a rustic crackled blush pink pot I have- I think that will go really nicely with the red tones in the leaves.
A while ago I mentioned that I was redoing my quilt and needed to just finish the edge binding- here’s how it turned out. I love the nice clean edge it gives to the quilt. It took me approximately 3 hours to stitch… or the length of one movie marathon.
Our local library is very small, and doesn’t have much selection (if we didn’t have inter-library loans, I would never read anything), but the one thing it does have is a lot of vintage books still in circulation.
Aren’t these two volumes beautiful? The gilt one is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. And the other is a biography of Beatrix Potter, which was so enjoyable to read!
I have been on a winning streak lately with thrift shopping. For the past year or so I haven’t found much worth bringing home, but in the past few weeks I have found quite a few great vintage pieces.
A large basket that needs a bit of repair, but was only $2 so I couldn’t pass it up, a couple of hatboxes that I plan to recover, some “Boopie” glassware that matches my other sets, and a velvet t-shirt that I plan to use the fabric for a hat.
And above, a little blue and white teapot (which is the exact same design as the one my sister has!), a silver napkin holder and pedestal, a carved wooden box and an embossed glass votive I’m going to pour a beeswax candle into. The box just needed a bit of refreshing with some linseed oil and it was good to go.
And finally, to end this post, these are the first flowers to come up each Spring, and they are so cheerful. They are wild Woodland Tulips and they are are only a few inches tall, but they make such an impact.
I hope your week is a wonderful one, whatever you have planned!
More tulips! ‘Tis the season for them, after all. They had them at the grocery store and we just couldn’t go home without a bunch. My mom and sister picked out these white and purple tulips because they were just barely starting to open..and they turned out to be perfect.
These photos above were from the second day, when they were just starting to open.
They opened fully without shrivelling and they’ve lasted over a week now. I put a penny in the vase to see if it would encourage them to stand upright (considering what happened with my last bunch…) and it worked. The purple ones, in particular, are incredibly pretty; as they’ve aged the tips have turned blue.
Tulips always put me in the mood for spring. It will be a while before any of our spring flowers start to bloom in our garden, but in the meantime we have these cut blooms to enjoy.
What is your favourite cut flower? Are you always tempted to bring home a bouquet when you see them at the grocery store?
