Saturday, August 9, 2014

The accidental flower

All my flowers are more or less accidental, but this week's are definitely sliding towards very accidental. A few are pleasant surprises from packets of mixed seeds and some are a total surpise. 

First of all I should really have eaten this artichoke, but since I missed my window of opportunity, it has turned out to be a very interesting cutflower. 







The flower is intriguing. Unfortunately the picture below hasn't quite managed to catch its more violet colour, but it shows its sea anemone likeness. 

Like the artichoke, I did not expect to have any nicotiana, but the ones in this week's bunch did self sow on my allotment. They provide a wonderful fragrance. The dahlias are from a packet of seed that were just described as "mixed large flowered". These ones are the first to flower, which is very promising!  I also added some Queen of Sweden roses, Cerinthe major 'Purpurascens' and Ageratum. 



This is the first year that I have sown Ageratum. The plants do very well, despite my attempts to neglect them. This again was a packet of mixed seed. Some have come up mauve and pinkish, but the blues are simply magnificent.  The flowers are like little bristles, as the picture below shows. Next year I will most definitely sow them again.  

I am also pleasantly surprised by the Helenium (Helena Mixed - another packet of mixed seed!) that I picked last week. It is still going strong. Towards the end of the week I took out the flowers that were past their best and added some Cornflowers Black Ball, Dahlia Karma Choc, sunflowers and white cosmos.

So again, I have three vases with flowers in the house! 

(And in case you were wondering why this is on a Saturday and not a Friday, we had torrential rain in Cambridgeshire yesterday, so I hid inside instead of going to the allotment.)








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