Something beautiful: Graham Thomas roses

Oh dear, my poor neglected blog! I want to thank each one of you that persists in reading my sporadic posts, there seems so little time to write here whilst trying to run my jewellery business and all that a big family involves! So, I have decided to release myself from the notion that only long and involved posts are worth writing, and hope that you will enjoy my more frequent but shorter offerings - just beautiful things that I find that inspire me, and I hope you too? Maybe you can think of this little spot on the web as a tiny receptacle for simple, beautiful finds that might brighten your day, as well as offering behind the scenes glimpses into the world of Wild Acre designs? Nothing grand, nothing complicated, but hopefully some photographs and words to enjoy and to remind us all of the beauty and stillness in the world, especially when the pace of life seems a bit frantic?  A brief pause, or slow-down moment in the day? Does that sound ok?

Here is today's beauty - Graham Thomas roses outside my kitchen door catching the early morning sunshine. Yes, real sunshine at last, feels miraculous in this bewilderingly grey June, so I'm catching every ray of it while I can. A cup of coffee sitting on the low garden wall, looking at these yellow beauties was a great, if early, start to the day.

Have a lovely thursday, remember to pause and smell the roses!

gathered: hellebores

I have always loved having a bit of the outdoors, indoors. Flowers in season even if just tiny posies, but also foraged finds - feathers, lichen, twigs, pebbles - lovely, gathered things that connect me to the landscapes I love. I am really trying to declutter stuff we don't love anymore from our home, so there is room to properly enjoy these small collections that do matter to me. I thought I might share what I collect, snip and enjoy each week here on the blog under the title 'gathered', and I hope it encourages us all to feel that just a few simple blooms really can be so worth the minimal effort involved? It is also, I suppose, part of my goal to make this year more mindful, and the ritual of growing, finding, collecting and displaying is a simple way to bring pleasure and calmness into the week - a bit of margin from all the busyness and deadlines that can take over. It means that I have an easy way to deepen my connection with the seasons, and relishing what makes each month special is in essence about noticing more keenly and finding gratitude in simple things which just seems to make life so much happier? There are lots of hashtags over on instagram that celebrate a similar intention, take a look at #natureinthehome #wanderandgather #thenaturetable  #stylingtheseasons if you are interested, and do please join in with my #naturenotes_february for a monthly collection of my seasonal finds and those of anyone else who would like to share their photos or sketches?

This week, it is all about enjoying the hellebores while they are still carpeting the small woodland part of our garden. They have been in flower for weeks already and I know they won't be around much longer so I am picking a few each week, and popping them in tiny vases to enjoy. The trick with hellebores is to cut them just before they start producing seed, and keep the stalks very short, scalding the stem ends in boiling water for about 10-15 seconds, shielding the flowers from the steam. This way they last a few days rather than drooping within hours. The shortness of the stems means you actually see their beautiful faces!

I would love to hear about any of your flowers or other finds this week, and I hope they give you lots of pleasure in your home. 

This week's pickings from the cutting patch

I'm loving greys and pinks at the moment. Here there is a mixture of japanese anemone,  artemesia, echinacea, annual scabious and poppy seedheads. The pincushion flowers, (much nicer than the official 'scabious' name!), have long been a favourite because they are gorgeous enough to swoon over from bud to full flower whilst being fantastically prolific and long stemmed. Artemesias have been a real discovery this year - there are many forms that provide the most elegant silvery foliage for the whole growing season.

I realise I have been rather scant with the flower news and photos this summer, so whilst there are still pretty flowers in the garden, I will try and post a weekly photo of what I am picking and loving most. I don't sell many now, the jewellery has become my full time business, but I am still growing a garden full of loveliness for my own enjoyment, still with an emphasis on plants that look fabulous in the garden and the vase with the least amount of faffage. If you live locally and would like to buy a bunch now and again I am still very happy to provide for that.

I'd love to know what you are growing and picking in your garden whether for the vase or the plate?

Let's play catch up 2: the garden

What a gorgeous summery week we have had, the garden is in full June flounce and I'm loving the giddy first flush of summer herbaceous abundance. The delphiniums have come back better than ever, I do love them. Dark Knight and Summer Skies are two of my favourite varieties.

I am finally learning the importance of some good vertical lines in a border and now that the alliums are over, it is the grasses, giant nepeta, delphs and lupins that are doing it best at the moment. Love me some floral spires! Poppies and cornflowers are heading skyward too.

Wishing you a lovely June weekend, what a cracking time of year. xx

White tulips

I am revelling in my white tulips this Spring. Tulipa Spring Green was originally planted three years ago and is still going great guns, despite the fact I never lift them over the winter. I suppose if any thing has changed about them it is that the colour seems a little creamier this year, less white. Still gorgeous though and they last well in the vase.

The other, Tulipa Smirnoff has been a fantastic discovery. A kind neighbour gave me some bulbs in January and I was doubtful if they would flower properly being planted so late. Just a couple of months later they were rocketing through the surface of the soil and I just cannot believe how gorgeous they are.

The following pictures were taken after over a week in a vase - I will be growing loads of these next year! The jaggedy edges, like so many little frost spikes, just make me go weak at the knees.

There is something so lovely about the shape of tulip flowers, I am wondering if I could use a similar shape in my jewellery somehow....

Anyway, have a brilliant weekend wherever you are, get your mitts on some locally grown narcissi or tulips if you can, you won't be sorry! xxx

inspirations: summer's end

I think this is one of my very favourite moments of year, as summer draws to its end. September starts a whole new season of possibilities - there is an energy greater even than the turn of the calender year I think, quickened by the smell of sharpened pencils and new school uniforms and the first of the autumn bonfires.

Certainly I feel that tinge of melancholy that summer is over, but where we live the weather is often so wonderful in early september and the light is just beautiful.  There are still cosmos and anemones and some late planted loveinthemist to retain the feeling of summer,

The garden is full of the rich, venetian colours of late summer, and because they will be gone soon, somehow their beauty is even poignant, so I take time to really look and enjoy.

The nights and early mornings are colder but the softly slanting light  and afternoon warmth more than makes up for it, and it is lovely to light the first evening fires of the year.

Most of all, I find so much creative inspiration in late summer and early autumn. All the delicacy of seedheads and grass infloresences are waist high along the paths I walk, and those amazing shapes are the ones I love to explore in silver. It is impossible not to be inspired by the field margins at the moment.

Wouldn't these shapes be amazing in 18ct gold or silver? I can't wait to get cracking!

Which is all great timing because as of next weekend I am taking part in Hertfordshire Open Studios, when artists open their studios to visitors and exhibit their work. I am actually showing my jewellery every sunday afternoon at the studio of a fantastic local ceramicist, Carole Sender and we will be joined by the artist and photographer, Vanessa Champion who will be showcasing some amazing photographs from her work with two charities in Mumbai. We kick off with a big celebration next saturday night - with sangria, tapas and live flamenco guitar - should be quite a night, do email me if you would like further details, I would love to meet some bloddies!

end of summer flowers

Today it is windy and cool and I am back in skinny jeans, a long sleeved t-shirt and checked shirt - it all feels like a bit like autumn is on its way.

The colours in the garden are slipping into the russets, rich burgundies and deep pinks of autumn too - the sedums doing their annual flush into gorgeous rich pinks and the dahlias flowering their nearly black hearts out. It means lots of lovely new flowers for the house and to make up into bouquets.

A strange perk of the topsy turvey weather this year is that I have sweetpeas still in flower - I have never had sweetpeas and dahlias out together, but am enjoying the treat!

So there's plenty still to pretty up the house, and if you want to see what some other lovely flower fans are picking for their vases, head over to Jane's flower party, and say I sentchya'! :)

A flowery adieu

While the slightly strange coolish but humidish and frequently showerish weather continues, the garden is looking curiously lush for August - the grass is still deep green and the flowers that usually bloom in September are in full flush now with dark dahlias flowering alongside some lime green glads, rudbeckia and heleniums bringing new hotter hues. And yet some other flowers that should have been flowering weeks ago, are just making an appearance. Yes, sweet peas, I am talking about you!

I truly believe that there is little more pleasing than a bunch of your own sweet peas on your kitchen table or window sill. The scent is so pretty is it almost silly. Worth the weeks of staring, slightly crossly, at weedy seedlings refusing to grow.

Elsewhere, poppies, drumstick alliums and achillea are jostling for space and larkspur and verbena are racing skyward along with delphiniums and swathes of cosmos,

And just as the garden is reaching its mad, glorious best, I am leaving it for a couple of weeks. It is the same every year, but Sicily and sunshine and Norfolk and messing about in the sea are calling so the garden will have to admire itself without me wandering around it telling the plants how gorgeous they are! I will be awol for a week or two, so enjoy the sun/showers, the beautiful flowers, the slower pace that august brings and, of course, the 'lympics! Go team GB! Bxx