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sweet peas
2007-06-29 16:33:00
This afternoon I have been trying to get the sweetpeas under control - the strong winds had tangled up a lot of the stems, blowing them off the frame and the miserable weather had made me put off doing anything about them. The result was a whole load of flapping stems at funny angles and hoop shaped stems. Today has been sunny though and it is good to have a job to do that isn't muddy so that I can still serve in the shop.So I have cut off most of the old leaves and the tendrils - the former so that the plant's energy goes into making long stems rather than supporting the leaves and the latter so that the stems don't get caught and bent by the tendrils clinging on. It is a tedious job really and the sweet pea vine looks much worse afterwards - a gangly mass of awkward stems - but hopefully by the middle of next week it will be covered in flowers again.The sweet pea bouquet was put together for a man who ordered our whole sweet pea crop (120 stems) today for his wife - how ro...
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Schools out for summer - what summer?
2007-06-28 11:22:00
Tomorrow school breaks up for the long summer vacation - this is a great benefit of living in Scotland, allowing speedy Scottish parents to take cheaper summer holidays before the English schools break up and it becomes high season prices.I love the summer holidays - though this year we are not going away. I love the more relaxed pace, the children being able to just mooch and read and draw if they want to, without the pressure and rush of having to be at set places at particular times. I love the fact they don't have to dress up or wear uniform. We have a relaxed house over the holidays as I still have to work so while I do that, they can do pretty much what they like (as long as it doesn't involve television or power tools).Last summer was glorious, the sun shone all holiday and the children turned almost feral with sun kissed hair and ingrained dirt from days spent outside making dens and lying in the grass. This year - despite the promised hot summer - it does not look as g...
More About: Summer , Schools

A suprise amongst the thistles
2007-06-27 21:37:00
I am not the world's greatest weeder - somehow it just all gets away from me and I am stuck at this time of year saying "just where did all those thistles come from?", "How can we have so much couch grass?", "What would actually exterminate creeping buttercup?"The garden goes from looking artily meadowish to being a great lump of unstoppable weeds (oh the garden club visiting in a fortnight will not be impressed).However one advantage is this - look a self sown orchid - it is only a common orchid, we have then down in the damp field, but it has sown itself in a patch of briza maxima grass and looks suitably exotic.This evening I have ordered our pigs - two piglets arrive a week today so tomorrow we shall have to get the patch of ground ready for them - the idea is that they will clear the ground so that we can plant willows and dogwoods in the autumn. I am very fond of pigs but shall have to remember not to get too fond of these ones
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When to cut flowers - daisy types
2007-06-26 16:52:00
Today I had a meeting with a bride who is going to be getting married in Scotland in August but who lives in New York. She was wanting wild looking flowers for her wedding but was worried that they would droop and die within the day.It turns out that she regularly buys flowers from a New York Farmers Market and they are all dead within a couple of days. She thinks it is the type of flower and inevitable.This really shouldn't happen and that it does is a big problem for me.My biggest problem in the business is getting people to trust that flowers picked from a garden will last. I guarantee that all but a few varieties (sweetpeas, lilac for example) will last more or less a week, many last longer. Garden flowers won't last as long as an irradiated carnation but then again do you really want flowers hanging around so long that you have to dust them? They certainly do not die within a couple of days.I think that part of the problem is that people remember their own clammy hand chi...
More About: Flowers , Types , Lowe , Flow , Daisy

Reception rant
2007-06-25 12:05:00
The wedding where I was arranging the flowers had the reception at one of the hotels on the banks of Loch Lomond. The hotel attracts wedding couples with its spectacular views over the Loch but on days like yesterday - where you couldn't actually see the water from the function room - it presumably has to offer something else.I am not mentioning the name of the hotel as this is going to be a wee bit of a rant.The bride wanted very simple understated flowers so at the reception there was just to be small table centres - so far, so easy - I was just to drop them off after I had arranged the church flowers.At least that was the idea - I arrived and this was the entrance for the wedding party. Actually that is not quite true as I took this photo after I had already done a lot of litter picking. 2 rather ill looking bay trees in chipped plastic pots and weedy soil - covered in old dirty plastic ribbons, most of which had come undone.I spoke to the hotel about it and they said "Oh the...
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20 years and counting.
2007-06-23 14:31:00
Tomorrow Euan and I celebrate dating for 20 years. We have married, bought houses and had children in those 2 decades but 24th June is still the most important date in the year.We had known each other as friends for a good while when we started "courting" - as my Grandad termed it - so it was never going to be a casual, take it or leave it, affair. There was too much to risk losing.Still 20 years is a long time and we have both changed a lot from our 18 year old selves. Probably for the better . . . definitely for the better. Tomorrow I shall be arranging flowers for a wedding in Luss and Euan shall be putting the roof on his shed. Then we have a babysitter booked!
More About: Years , Year , Ears , Counting

William Lobb
2007-06-21 17:06:00
Despite the fact that they are the most asked for flower, I do not grow many roses. Our climate is really too damp and it is very difficult to grow roses commercially without using a lot of herbicides and fungicides. As Rosebie Morton of The Real Flower Company pointed out, brides don't want greenfly climbing out of their bouquets.Last year however a 3 for 1 end of season offer came in from David Austin that was just too tempting and I plumped for 3 moss roses called William Lobb (named after the Cornish plant collector), planting them with the growth tied to a dome made from hazel so that they will become a flowery heap in the border. Eventually they will be 8' tall.They have just begun to flower - the bluest dark pink I have ever seen with a lovely scent. They have been a joy since the oddly bumpy buds arrived.I am doing flowers for a wedding on Sunday and hope to use some of these in the table decorations - if I can bear to part with them that is.
More About: Liam

Business guru
2007-06-20 15:53:00
This is the man I have been spending the past couple of days with (well in print anyway) - he is Michael Gerber, author of the book The E Myth Revisited. As I have explained before I tend to lose books, sending them home with people and then never getting them back again. This happened last summer with my copy of the E Myth and I have finally cracked and picked up another copy.The reason is, besides my compulsive book buying habit, is that it is quite simply an inspirational book. It shows how small businesses, particularly ones like mine founded on the fact that I can technically do things (sewing, gardening), fail because you are so busy, busy, busy doing the day to day stuff - the making, the selling, the invoicing, the packing, the meetings with clients, the floor sweeping, the weeding- that you forget to give any time over to actually building the business itself. This is one of those books that pinpoint all your faults, make you accept them and THEN shows you how to change...
More About: Business , Guru , Sine

Magazine madness . . .
2007-06-19 17:33:00
Yesterday I went into Glasgow to sort out a few things - I had an hour to spare while the shop tried to fix our i-pod battery so went to Borders magazine department. Ah, fatal - all the imports were just in (its work you know!) - and I am a sucker for nice photos and 101 ways with ric-rac. Actually the aesthetic of most of the US magazines is a bit too frilly and pristine for me but in some ways that is ideal for inspiration as I can't accidentally slide into full on plagiarism (see Gigibird for an interesting post on this). The uppermost magazine is new to me - an Australian production though with Abigail Ahern's house and also somewhere very very nice and calm in the Netherlands.Getting this bag bursting lot took 5 minutes so I went for a coffee at the hyper stylish Fifi and Ally.
More About: Magazine , Madness

Flowers are very emotive things. I am always re...
2007-06-18 16:12:00
Flowers are very emotive things. I am always reminded of that at this time of year as the first sweet peas and sweet williams arrive in the shop and customers begin to reminisce about their grandparents gardens.I too associate particular flowers with particular people - foxgloves, at their peak this week, I associate with my Australian friend Sue.Sue moved with her family to stay in a cottage near our old house for the year of 1998 when her husband Phil worked on a job exchange. Sue is one of these people with a natural ease which makes everything that she does appear to be exactly the way it should be done.She loves flowers but the exchange rate difference made Scotland a very expensive place to stay, particularly with 3 children. There was no room in her weekly budget for the flowers she was used to buying back in Melbourne. So she would pick cow parsley and foxgloves from the verge outside her house and arrange them in tall jugs in the kitchen. It looked wonderful, as it wou...
More About: Flowers , Things , Thing , Motive , Lowe

Baby boots
2007-06-16 12:38:00
What is it about baby shoes that is just so CUTE???A couple of days I mentioned that I was embroidering some baby boots - here are the finished versions.They are for a baby born about 10 days ago - his parents have just aquired chickens - hence the pecking chicks on the fronts of the shoes.They are made in vintage linen and have been great fun to work out.I have a Japanese craft book with lovely baby shoes in it but none of them looked very practical as they are more like adult court shoes and I suspect that they would fall off on first outing. I based these on those lovely leather baby shoes that don't fall off at all.A frippery perhaps but there is something about new babies which encourages such things.
More About: Baby , Boots , Boot

How to - Part 1
2007-06-15 17:45:00
I have been meaning to add a kind of "how to" series onto the website. Today I have finally got my act together with time, flowers, space, camera and (probably most importantly) Sally asking questions about when exactly I was planning to get it done.So here we have a very easy table centre - the instructions are here - it doesn't have to be in a pewter goblet, any small vase will do, and it doesn't have to be sweet peas.Have a go and let me know how you get on. I'd love suggestions as to what "How to" s people would like. I was so overwhelmed by the number of e-mailed photos of poppies after my poppy tips!
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Free Stuff - Fritillary seeds
2007-06-15 12:56:00
The snakeshead fritillaries have now got ripe seedheads with lots of seed stacked inside - if anyone wants some free of charge let me know by e-mail snapdragonjane@yahoo.co.uk and then send a stamped addressed envelope to Jane Lindsey, Sunnyside, Gartacharn Road, Balfron Station, G63 0NH. Mark it with what you want as I'm a bit dippy.Snakeshead fritillaries like damp soil in either sun or shade - they will grow in grass but I would clear them patches of soil to get them started. Christopher Lloyd suggested growing them amongst Gunnera and other plants that are late into growth. I used to have some amongst the rhubarb for the same reason.
More About: Free Stuff , Free , Stuff , Seed , Seeds

Connections
2007-06-14 09:32:00
Connection is the word that we would have inscribed above the door in Snapdragon's imaginary shop. It is the word at the core of what we aspire to do. Connect with the seasons, with the soil, connect with our customers, with the community. Only connect. This blog is a symptom of that quest.Yesterday Carolyn wrote a very astute comment on my post about the demise of the Country Living Scottish Fair, questioning whether handmade was enough of an intrinsic value in itself. It was a comment that made me think - because I am very vociferous about the fact that the similar catch all "organic" covers a multitude of sugary sins. I think that she is right - why do I get worked up about the need to preserve the hand made in Britain?If I want to buy a salad bowl why do I go to the local craft gallery rather than Habitat? If I wanted to buy a doorstop why Primrose Hill rather than Cath Kidston?And I think that it stems from this basic need for connection - connection at some level to a d...
More About: Connect , Connections

Not quite the golden egg you would think.
2007-06-12 13:32:00
Last week I got a letter from Upper Street Events who run the Country Living Fairs to say that they would not be having a Fair in Scotland next Spring.It has turned out not to be an viable event for them. It is a strange thing - talk to the stall holders and they feel that they are paying too much for their space, talk to the customers and they feel that the ticket price is too high, talk to the organisers and they say that they cannot make a profit on the event.Perhaps there are not enough people in Scotland/North of England to justify the event - certainly, speaking to people who do both the London and the Glasgow Fair there are far fewer people at the Scottish event, spending far less per person.That is perhaps the rub. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend who had just bought a beautiful quilt from a catalogue specialising in Fair Trade goods. It was a lovely piece of work - the pieces had been carefully toned and my friend had bought it because of that, but also because it had b...
More About: Quit , Would , Golden , The Go , The G

poppies - free to a good home
2007-06-09 11:56:00
I have decided to get rid of these pale pink Oriental poppies - I want to be able to sell the darker, dusky pink "Manhattan" in bud without worrying that they will turn out to be a different colour when they come out in the vase.So these 3 plants are free to a good home (buyer must uplift) - they would look beautiful in a border with catmints, artemesias and roses - one plant has more picotee edges than the other.I got the original plants from Sue Bell at Floreat Plants but have lost the label so I can't remember the name.Drop me a line - snapdragonjane@yahoo.co.uk if you fancy them - first come first served.The weather today is fabulous - the first day that I have been able to garden in bare feet.
More About: Home , Free , Good , Poppies , Poppi

Daisy doll - Mark 63
2007-06-08 16:07:00
When the girls were younger we had a book of miscellaneous bedtime tales - my favourite was a one called Ruby. I can't remember the author but the story was about the adventures of some toys - led by the eponymous Ruby - who escaped from the reject bin at the toy factory and eventually found happiness by being adopted by a little girl.They were obviously paying attention to their bedtime stories as the girls' bedrooms are now full of mutanty dolls - scooped from MY reject bin. Doll s with fat heads, dolls with thin heads, dolls with backwards shoes, dolls with felt hair (that did NOT work), dolls whose faces turned out to be really really scary.I am amazed that I have actually persevered with this - I am not patient by nature - but here we have The Finished Daisy Doll. Her body is made from vintage French linen and wool gingham with vintage ticking shoes; her titian locks are the jute string I use to bind my sweet peas; her reversible dress is a Liberty print with gingham as the...
More About: Mark

An excuse for a play about - wip
2007-06-07 09:37:00
At the week end I was asked whether I made rag dolls. I had a material rabbit with me on my stall at the Green Gallery opening that sold encouragingly fast, so I said that I would give it a go.So this week has been a parade of prototypes - and my girls are now proud owners of a series of slightly wonky versions, rejected because their faces were too fat or because, as Katie said, "Mummy are her feet meant to be backwards?".I think that I am now getting somewhere and the photo is of the latest prototype - there are some changes to make - everyone preferred an earlier version's hair and I need to work out a better solution for the clothes.I want the finished doll to be quite old fashioned looking - like those early C19th wooden dolls with their painted on hair and secretive faces but I also want her to work as a dress up doll so that her clothes come off and she can have alternative wardrobes - perhaps a ballet tutu.I also want her to have outsize hands so that she is easy to hold ...
More About: Play , Excuse

Busy bees
2007-06-05 20:37:00
This week Sally and I have been getting our fingers out and buzzing all over the place to let people know we are here. It is something we should have done 3 weeks ago.When I began to sell from the house 2 years ago we had a very specific group of people who came each week - we were on the routine run between the Friday farmshop at France Farm and Killearn jumping beans. They were largely people that I knew socially through toddler groups and their friends.A couple of weeks ago I began to notice that we no longer get this 11 am rush, so on Friday Sally and I sat down to think about the whys and wherefores, going through all the ex-11 am regulars. Some now come later on the way back from the afternoon school run - their children have simply outgrown toddlerhood. Others have returned to full time work and are not about at all on a Friday. Some have extended their maternity leaves, or returned to college, or taken up some arty non-paying job, they are down a wage and without cash t...
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Repeating the pattern?
2007-06-04 13:05:00
When I was growing up my Mum, like many women tried to find piece work that would fit in with being at home after school and in the holidays - she did B&B, she painted pegs to look like soldiers and highland dancers, she helped organise play schemes but most consistently she made toys for a local craft shop.My clearest memories of Mum before she took up antique dealing are of her sitting each evening in front of the wood burner with a willow basket full of half made animals waiting to be hand finished.Recently I have been drawn to making toys again - and I am looking back to patterns from the 60s and 70s, probably quite similar in style to the patterns copied from magazines in my youth. This cute pony is my favourite at the moment - made in soft suede effect fabric with felt mane and tail he is just the right size and squashiness for a small hand.I wonder whether this is a form of broodiness - my girls are growing up fast and are not as attached to soft toys any more (though they p...
More About: Pattern , Eating

Scotland's Garden Show
2007-06-02 21:59:00
Today I met a friend at Scotland's Garde n Show at Ingilston. She has suggested that we do a show garden there next year and we were there to see exactly what was involved and decide whether it would be a good idea.To be honest I was really disappointed - there were hardly any show gardens and most were quite derivative with plants stuffed in so that they looked like a garden centre shopping trolley after a colour co-ordinated shopping spree.I was rather glum and hot footed it over to the floral hall where the nurseries exhibit. And there - lo and behold - was the innovation, high quality construction and beautiful planting that was missing in the outdoor show gardens. Unfortunately the lighting isn't great within the hall and I didn't have my big flash so the photos are really bad but this garden was by far my favourite. It is part of the Binny Plants Stall and is a co-operative venture with the Biggar based garden design and construction company Landmarkers (LandmarkersScot...
More About: Arden

The greenhouse today
2007-06-01 14:37:00
Just a quick post today with photos of the greenhouse and the flowers etc. for sale today.My favourite flowers are anchusa dropmore - a great deep glowing blue which mixes well with the deep pink chrysanthemum "duro" and red astrantias.The other photo shows cushions and toys on the vintage french metal cot.
More About: Today , Greenhouse , Ouse , The G

Testing lab
2007-05-31 11:33:00
A large percentage of the flowers that I grow and sell are not the kind of flowers that are grown commercially as cut flowers. You will not find them in most florist shops, you cannot look them up in Alan Armitage's reference book on growing cut flowers. There are no DEFRA or USDA figures on yield, vase life or post-harvest treatment.This is why I have my very low tech testing lab - a row of old glass bottles on the dining room mantlepiece. The site is typical of a house - not in full sun but open to the steam of the kitchen - the bottles are filled with plain tap water and the flowers get no special treatment bar searing where necessary.For a flower to pass the test it has to last a week.As I type this we have Gladiolus byzantium, (a small pink gladioli I first saw in the meadow at Great Dixter), Allium christophii; Briza media, (my favourite small grass), Briza maxima, (beautiful but a nightmare to pick); flag iris (which are just going to squeak it to a week I think), wild oa...
More About: Testing

Poppies
2007-05-30 09:40:00
Every year - at exactly this time - I write a post about poppies.Every year - at exactly this time - I am overwhelmed by their beauty.We live in a house that isn't exactly as I would like it to be - when we bought it, it was a typical 1980s farmers bungalow - built as an economical tied house with straight blocky lines, aluminium windows and hardboard doors. We are gradually changing it but it often feels, with our painted chipboard floors and complete lack of storage space, as if we are still a long way away.The relevance of this to the poppies is this. I think the magic of having cut flowers in a house, and what separates them out from houseplants, is that they change from day to day. The doyennes of this are poppies and tulips and to my mind this makes them the very best of cut flowers.The top photo is of our living room - with a crock of poppies taken straight from the shop and plonked in the middle of the coffee table. Every time I go into the room it is the poppies I see,...
More About: Poppies , Poppi

Our woodpecker - at last
2007-05-29 12:48:00
Well this is the best I could do - the woodpeckers (there are 2 of them it turns out) are rather shy and the merest zoom of a lens send them flying back down the valley to the wood.Here he is caught pecking at the monkey nuts hanging from one of our plant supports in the border.These nut rings have been brilliant - they last for ages as the birds have to work to get their food.
More About: Pecker

All change
2007-05-27 21:14:00
We moved all the chickens to the 2nd field today into a fruit cage - the idea is that they can become a bit more free ranging in a week or so - being let out of the cage to potter about in the long grass during the day and returning to safety of their house at night.In the short term the netted cage will also stop the buzzard and Minou attacking this gorgeous fluffy chick while still allowing it to socialise with the rest of the hens. As you can see it is still very much with its two "mothers".Cuddles our rabbit who thinks it is a chicken cannot accompany them to their summer housing - he would just disappear off into the wild I think - so he is now in the old chicken ark awaiting an intense re-socialising programme to get him used to being petted again. Then, when we get the new guinea pigs (soft touch Mummy!) he may or may not be housed with them depending on whether they all get on without fighting.We have just been outside watching a woodpecker (greater spotted we think) feedi...
More About: Change , Chang , Chan

A different scale.
2007-05-26 16:34:00
One of the things that bothers me about the cut flower industry is how, over the past couple of decades, we have become conditioned to buy what is most convenient for the large scale producers and importers.90% of the flowers available to buy in the supermarket or florist shop conform to the size which will fit easily into a standard florist package box - smallish head, long straight stem. This cuts costs right down all along the production line from mechanised growing, spraying and harvesting to a certain number of boxes fitting onto a pallet or into a refrigerated van.What has been lost is a sense of different scales - whether that is eight feet tall plume poppies or miniature astrantia - if it doesn't fit into the system you are unlikely to be able to get it. The most convenient is rarely also the most appropriate or attractive.One of the flowers shops that I have come across via Amy Stewart's site is the Bonny Doon Garden Company which addresses this, producing a range of p...
More About: Rent , Scale , Diff

Hanging baskets
2007-05-25 09:17:00
I have never really made up hanging baskets - there was nowhere to hang them except in the tunnel while they had to be under cover and the thought of banging my head on them while I tended everything else didn't really appeal.This year I made an exception and made up a few - largely to decorate the greenhouse and make it look generous and full. I went for large sized baskets with good compost and moisture retaining granules to make maintenance more possible. I planted them up in mid April and over the past 5 weeks they have really thrived and bulked up. Now they areready to fly the nest.It is now the right time to put out summer bedding in Central Scotland - there is not such a drastic temperature swing between day and night and there is only a very slim chance of late frosts.The hanging baskets have proved to be very useful as presents for men - this photo shows a basket delivered yesterday as a birthday present. It is an elegant mix of silver leaves and white and blue trailing ...
More About: Baskets , Bask

Updating the website
2007-05-23 18:17:00
This afternoon has been drizzly so I have finally put down my hoe and got around to updating some things on the website. I have put up a few more of my Mum's ever popular chicken paintings - these cost about £2.00 to pack and post, and they are ideal for chicken lovers. She is busy working on paintings for a series of exhibitions in East Lothian so I suspect that these are going to be all I can manage to prise of her for the next month or so.This photo is of Treela, an Isla Brown and our cheekiest chicken. Today I found her in our bathroom, perched on the side of the bath. Neither cats no dogs bother her at all when she is in the house.I also finished the felted/embroidered cushions and put together some kits.I have loved making these cushions - they are the ideal work to do in the evenings either outside watching the sunset or inside watching the t.v. The cushions have turned out even better than I thought they would - I was determined not to produce anything that looked li...
More About: Website , Dati

New Chick
2007-05-21 09:34:00
The other excitement on my birthday was the arrival of this little yellow ball of fluff. Unfortunately it was the only one of the eggs that hatched and the rest seem to have been infertile. I am also unsure about what type it is - one bantam and one normal egg have disappeared and there were no shell traces to identify which egg hatched. We shall have to wait and see.To be honest I am quite glad that we didn't have a mass hatching - I love the whole waiting to see thing and we don't want too many hens - if we could increase our wee flock by 1 or 2 a year that would probably be ideal. We don't rely on selling eggs or hens and they are a kind of garden pet, so it also nice to be able to identify each one individually.It also stops there being any gender problems - we don't have a cockerel at the moment and are happy to have one so it doesn't matter which sex the ball of fluff is - However we would not have been able to keep 2, 3 or 4 cockerels and would have had to dispatch t...
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