Only two days ago I was busy getting excited about my first sweet pea of summer – now I can hardly keep up with the non-stop picking. (Although what’s not to love about plants that produce more pretty scented flowers the more of them you pick? It’s the garden equivalent of a never ending chocolate bar.) Certain colours seem to be blooming more quickly – or at least in greater numbers – than others: so I’ve had lots of dark cherry red, cream and light pink flowers already, but only a smattering of fuschia, lilac and purple and a very few of my favourite raspberry ripple flowers. Luckily, the pinks are fighting back …
Tomorrow this little lot will be finding their way into water, joining the three other bunches I’ve had already (sometimes I think the flowers open the moment I turn my back). But I’ve yet to discover a way of displaying them really stylishly – I’ve been resorting to jam jars and, more shamefully, a pair of little glasses we got with a bottle of Raki in Turkey which have their boozy origins written on the front – you can just about see the logo here. Classy.
What I really need is a set of beautiful tea glasses or perhaps a proper sweetpea vase, although I wonder if that is perhaps a little grown-up. I’m not yet at the stage where I own different crystal vases for different flowers, well not unless someone else is buying them for me. I want to spend my cash on plants, not things to stuff them into. And in any case, that big jar of pickles in the fridge looks like it will be finished and ready to be utilised soon …
