It is worth paying a bit of attention to preparing, or in official floristry terms "conditioning", cut flowers for their life in the vase. This is a picture of last week's bunch of wallflowers (Erysimum) which I didn't photograph until after I had written last week's blog as it had wilted a bit. Splitting the stems and letting them soak up warm water for a night most certainly did the trick. They have been gracing the bar for the latter part of the week and are still going strong. Although I also have got some more traditional yellow and orange wallflowers, I picked these two wonderfully bi-coloured ones especially for their crepe paper-like appearance.

Now for this week's bunch. Toddler and myself headed for the allotment early this morning, where we did sow some seeds. We sowed vegetables, but also some of my own saved oriental poppy and cornflower seed.  Even though I had prepared the seedbed the day before, with her "help" it obviously took a lot longer. You can probably imagine my numerous "No, don't put the stones that I just picked off the row back on it.", "Please don't walk over the raked bed." "Stop, that's where we've just sown," and so on. Needless to say that the seeds that I put in her hand ended up everywhere apart from in the designated seedbed, but who cares. We had fun and the advantage of saving your own seed is that you can afford to waste a bit. 

When we went home we took these with us: wallflowers as well as Euphorbia oblongata. 

I split the stems of the wall flowers when I cut them and I put all flowers immediately in water in an empty plastic milk bottle that I brought along for this purpose.  At home I combined all of these with with some cream-coloured tulips which appeared in my supposedly blue and pink border. Considering the pattern that they are emerging in I must have consciously planted these but why defeats me. While they have received a different designation, I have made a picture of the bed so in the summer I can take the bulbs out. 

There is is no doubt that conditioning is a bit of work, especially as I don't yet know by heart what to do with which flower and first have to look it up on the internet. I had noticed that Euphorbias sometimes flop a bit and so, after some internet searches, I seared the stems in boiling water for a few seconds. I also used a pin to prick the tulip stems just under their heads as this supposedly prevents them from hanging.  I'll let you know next week, but for now I can tell you that several hours in they are all doing really well. I may be imagining things, but I think that the tulips have actually grown in the last few hours ....

Here's the end result, including a picture with last week's bunch as well (after a little tidy up ie removing some dead flowers and a few yellow leaves).