Change of focus

September has blown in with strong winds, sparkling flashes of sunshine, wild rain and beautiful sunsets.

The garden is still suprisingly full of colour and life, but I have drawn the Wild Acre flower selling season to a close for this year, the wild weather and dwindling supplies of flowers makes it a bit precarious.  This was the last bouquet of the year, it was for a tenth wedding anniversary, echoing the style and colours of the original wedding flowers. It was such a pleasure to do, a heartfelt arrangement of the freshest garden flowers for a lovely local couple, right up my alley!

So the focus has shifted to the jewellery designing and making, and woah, its been exciting in that department in the last few weeks! Commissions, and an autumn/winter collection to pull together, exhibitions and craft markets all in the offing - I just need an extra couple of days in the week please! Here is a little sneak peak of a couple of pieces, much more to come in the next few months.

what i am loving about late summer

late summer blooms in punchy colours

golden afternoon sunlight

eating in the garden, reading in the hammock, 

cups of rose tea with bees buzzing and butterflies flitting 

playing with my youngest two before uniforms are pressed and shoes shined.

enjoying their freedom with them, relishing their crumpled shorts and lolly-dripped t-shirts. 

loving later breakfasts. time for pancakes and bircher meusli and langour.

 fruitpicking and crumble-baking and pie and jam-making. 

blackberry stained fingers and bare feet,

sprinklers, freckles,

even getting caught out by rain and 
leaving wet flipflops by the door.
good books and proper bedtime stories,
taking our time over these

happy last days of summer.

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sharing this on the Modern Country Style summer linky party
 the good life Wednesday linky do at a beach cottage
and At the Picket Fence's Inspiration Friday

May flowers

I have got many more plants in flower this May than last, thanks to the high temperatures and sunshine.

This is how the bouquets have been looking.

the last of the tulips in a bouquet for a customer's work colleague

to a lucky and loved mummy

destined for another mum! Loving Dicentra at the moment...

For a dinner party hostess. Made for a friend of mine to be given to another mutual friend - love those ones best!

The alliums 'purple sensation' are going over now but it won't be long until there are other varieties to take their place, plus a whole host of other annuals and perennials including peonies, dicentra, ammi, poppy seedheads, cornflowers, scabious, ornamental grasses, lavender and dianthus to name a few. Whoop whoop!!

Love your kitchen table

I have noticed this summer that the vast majority of customers have bought flowers from me to give to other people, very few for themselves.

I think the notion of flowers to give is delightful of course, but I feel a one-woman mission coming on to encourage people to stop thinking about buying for themselves as an unforgivable indulgence.

Flowers bring the outside in so beautifully, enhance a room, are a joyful statement of life as more than survival, no? I feel sure that this positive attitude is more common on the continent, (an image of flowers tucked in the market basket along with fruit, veg, pain et fromage comes to mind), here in the UK we seem embarrassed by the frivolity maybe?

Clearly they are not a necessity and in pinched times, they get dropped from the shopping list, that I do appreciate.

But, they can be so affordable, either picked for free from your own garden, or bought really reasonably from markets or in, other countries, pick-your-own farms. Or from flexibly-minded florists. Or, ahem, from me!!

Super swanky and expensive florists can be fabulous if money is not an issue, but perhaps the prices have put some off indulging themselves in such a 'luxury'.

Perception about a product will affect our buying habits I am sure.  At the moment I think most people in the UK, think of cheap flowers as coming from the supermarket or petrol station and being really dull and predictable, and beautiful, unusual flowers being bought from expensive, high-end florists. The proliferation of gorgeous, but reasonably priced flowers would encourage a shift in attitude I am thinking. Wild Acre has been trying to provide those kind of flowers, posies and small bouquets from as cheap as about £3 for a bedside posy. What do you think? Would you buy flowers for your own home regularly?

Summer in a jug...

This was made as a donation for a raffle, I loved making it and think it looks like summer in a jug! Every flower and leaf is from my garden and the old fashioned dianthus smell fabulous in a clove-like way.

Bouquet Envy!

Bouquet envy struck when I made this bouquet for a friend's mother-in-law, so I made one for myself and added some dark cornflowers - makes it feel like summer indoors despite the pouring rain outside! Flowers growing like topsy in the garden include white alliums, alchemilla mollis, cornflowers, ornamental grasses, herbs, purple honesty and very soon old English roses and lavender.