Morning my lovelies, it's yet another grey drizzly day here in North Yorkshire I'm sad to say, very un-Julyish still. But no matter, life goes on and I am happy enough pottering around dodging the showers.
Because of the weather we haven't been able to use our little outdoor space very much yet this summer, but I like to go outside most days to stroll round my little patch and check on my flowers. Usually when I'm cooking I open the back door and pop out in between chopping and stirring and baking (which is why I'm wearing my apron in above photo). I would say my flowers are more surviving than thriving but nevertheless they are growing and managing to do delightful, colourful flowery things and I love to go and say hello to them.
I confess I didn't grow my sweet peas from seed and haven't a clue what sort of variety they are. They were an impulse buy from the co-op one day when I popped in for a loaf of bread. There they were, lots of plantlets in in a dinky little tray for £1.99 and I was powerless to resist the lure of them, the promise of colour and scent to come. In my usual haphazard fashion though I didn't treat them very well and they ended up a bit root-bound in their dinky little plastic tray before I finally planted them out into a nice big blue-glazed pot.
So they look a little straggly don't they? And they haven't exactly
rocketed up the swirly sticks as I had anticipated. But I have hopes for them continuing to climb as the summer moves on so that eventually they might greet me
at face height rather than knee height. But still, as short as they are, they are delightful. The colours are fabulous, they're that wonderful mix of pastel and bright that I love. And the scent is ecsquiste. Really, it makes me go weak at the knees.
I know that you are supposed to pick sweet peas aren't you, the more you pick the more they grow, right? But it was still difficult, I felt such a meany cutting them! There was only a small handful to be had, and the stems were so short that they wouldn't really go into a jug or vase. So I arranged them in a little mug with some alchemila (from Lovely C's garden) and set them on the table.
The scent from this little posy was powerful enough to fill the whole room.. Some of us appreciated it more than others. I won't tell you what J says about the "stink" because it isn't very nice. However, me and Little Lady think it's delightful. Its the scent of summer.