Viscri

This summer, we spent most of the month of August in Romania.
We did not do much sightseeing, but one weekend we took the kids and went further into the heart of Transylvania.
Viscri is one of the spots we visited and it gave me the feel of a parallel world, one frozen in time far from civilisation, with kind people and where life is at a very slow pace.
Prince Charles was charmed by this place and chose to have a home away from home here.
I can understand why.

Magic in the Garden

This is our Romanian garden/orchard/veggie garden, one that we can enjoy only for about 5 weeks a year and maybe that's why it feels magical.

That plus the fact that you need to open a gate to see it from the main courtyard which gives it a feel of a secret garden.

These are merely iphone pictures so they don't capture its magic and it has many other angles I did not photograph, but I wanted to post them and remember what it looked like this summer.

Autumn Colours

Half of this bouquet is picked from a field, the other half from my garden.

I have recently discovered I like the combination of mustard yellow and shades of white.

It looks like a happy bouquet :)

Rainy Summer Day

What's to do on a rainy summer day?
Well, make bouquets and take some photos, of course!

My roses are back and I must leave ... for three weeks with the hope they'll be still thriving when I return.

Dahlia Time

Summer is in full swing and I've taken care of many things, the blog not being among them.

I just thought I'd post a couple of instagram photos of my new dahlia: Cafe au Lait

It's a big favourite among frashionable florists, so I looked for it in shops and managed to find it.

I do love it so!

Unfortunately, earwigs love it as well as you can see their bites on the outer petals :(

Have I mentioned I hate earwigs?
Well, I do.

And here's a glimpse on the other side of my little flower arrangement 

Fragrant Peas

Sweet peas season has started and this year I only have those I planted from seed.

I love the white ones with a touch of pink

Bouquets of June

One thing I love about having a garden is being able to have fresh fragrant bouquets from spring to late autumn.
As June is a month of bounty in this respect, I thought I'd post some of the bouquets I made and managed to take a picture of :)

Here is a recent one in a colour combination I'm rather fond of despite the fact that I'm generally not very drawn to getting yellow flowers for my garden.
It's Graham Thomas and the Pilgrim plus the mock-orange and a couple of lavender stems.
I found out that by crushing the wood stem of the mock-orange you can make its vase life considerably longer.

 

I've got these large cornflower blooms this year that last 7 days or more in the vase.

And they're just starting to show up.

And I've got a whole patch of them :)

I love this combination of sweet peas, scabious and corn flower.

 

June also means my girl's birthday and she had her first real party this year, so I picked flowers from the garden and made 4 arrangements.
This is one of them, the others I forgot to photograph.

And a natural self-made bouquet as this little rose always comes in perfect bunches