About my garden

Monday 9 January 2017

In a vase on Monday - Whatever we can find.

This is what we have been looking out at pretty much all weekend:



It is very mild though, that's about the best you can say about it apart from the fact it is quite atmospheric! Two days is enough though.

I have created two vases though. This is the first:


I pruned these off a smallish beech tree which is near our front gate. Some bits were pushing their way through the gate so needed a trim. I used my favourite vase and glass beads as suggested by Cathy. Thank you.

Then I remembered that there is one thing flowering so I should take advantage of that:



Mahonia flowers, I don't know what variety. Shown here with Heuchera 'Midnight Bayou'. For some reason doing fantastically well when others are a soggy mess. It's a little bit too much like a begonia for my liking but such wonderful colours and patterns on the leaves. Also a grass. I call it Hilda's Grass. I collected the seed when I used to look after her garden for her and have grown it ever since. Hilda has now sadly passed away but her memory lives on in my garden. It's a lovely bronze and green grass which gets quite big, falls gracefully and is perennial but I don't know what it is.

Now does anybody recognise this:





These are my plant labels, I've been collecting them in my shed for a year and a half. Last week I wrote all the names in this beautiful book which my daughter gave me last Christmas.






 
 








 I earmarked it for this job but have never got round to actually doing it. The labels are now stored away in a box too. I wrote the names of the plants and where I have planted them. 
How do you organise yours? Do you keep them in a box, with the plant or throw them?


For more colourful and creative vases visit Rambling in the Garden - In a vase on Monday - hosted by Cathy. It will make you look again at what you grow.

9 comments:

  1. Hi Alison, two lovely vases. The beech leaves still offer some colour when there's not so much to see. The Mahonia flowers are pretty, especially against those fabulous purplish Heuchara leaves and Hilda's orange grass. I, too, have plants dotted around the garden that are known not by their right name but by the name of someone associated with them. I keep my plant labels in a postcard album - not filed alphabetically but roughly in type, e.g. roses, climbers, etc. I find I enjoy flicking through it to find what I'm looking for. I do keep a notebook similar to yours to list the seeds sown. Elizabeth x

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  2. You might be surprised to learn that the view from my window is similarly socked in! After 6 years of drought, we're getting more rain than sunshine right now in normally sunny Southern California. Your vases are very different but equally lovely. I put in my first Mahonia ('Charity') this fall and look forward to seeing it fully in flower next year. As to the labels, I hang on to mine too with the intent of adding them to my on-line catalog on a timely basis, which in my case means about once every 3-4 months!

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    1. You are very organised. I'm sure you are enjoying the rain.

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  3. It was your big empty field that struck me, Alison, empty apart from your polytunnel that is - what will you do with all that space? Or does it have to be kept like that?. Your beech leaves are lovely and reminded me that I have not yet tried out glycerine for preserving leaves - my Mum used it on beech leaves recently with most fetching results and it is very easy to do. I went through a stage of keeping all my plant labels but without any organisation and and they just mounted up so in the end they were binned. All my plants are 'permamently' labelled and so far my memory is still pretty good anyway!Thanks for sharing today and hope your misty moisty days are soon over (as long as they are not replaced with cold and ice!)

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    1. We have lots of plans for the field but much of it will be meadow. Many wild flowers grew so we'll encourage that. I have fruit trees to the right, soon to have hens added. Veg beds to the left. Various trees are planted around as wind breaks and barriers. Mostly quite small as yet.

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    2. Sounds good - look forward to seeing more of it

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  4. Inventive arrangements; I like the Beech leaves displayed on their own in that way. I usually throw labels but I keep a record on a spread sheet.

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    1. I like the idea of a spreadsheet but I'm not sure if I'm that organised. I'd like to be.

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