Home garden diaries – Cambridge Flower Journal

Glowing peach, buzzing bees

Colour craving

Postbox-red tulips are dazzling in the spring sunshine this morning, together with hints of colour elsewhere. The leaves of epimedium fascinate me, with their heart shape, veined surface and range of tones from crimson to chartreuse…then up pops a delicate gathering of yellow flowers. Forget-me-nots have seeded themselves across our garden, for which I’m grateful.Continue reading “Colour craving”

Much promise

There is hope in the promise of new life and colour in springtime. Looking out of the window even on a grey, rainy day, I revel in the sight of green shoots and leaves, and of bulbs peering from pots, getting ready to bloom. Today, yellow is aplenty here… The pink of this cercis isContinue reading “Much promise”

Spiky January frost

Quite a different effect to the frost on 11 December – this time it’s spiky and covering everything: ☀ K

Signs of life

Next month I’m facilitating a mindfulness session which will focus on fascination with Winter. Here’s how the garden appeared today – viburnum budding; sarcococca confusa berries; weather-worn geranium leaves; rose hips; spring bulbs emerging; and other interesting forms: 🌱 K

Frosty fascination

I’ve never seen our garden so thick with frost. The cobwebs and leaf patterns are incredibly beautiful: 🕸 K

Quiet autumn magic

From this morning – faded chive seed heads, verbena, strange teasel greenery, and other tangled, rain-washed things… ✨ K P.S. Over the past few weeks I’ve been running short mindfulness sessions in my workplace, and included ‘mindful looking’, in which we each chose a natural object and looked carefully at it, then drew and/or wroteContinue reading “Quiet autumn magic”

September overflow

I’ve very much left our garden to do its own thing this past few weeks, following the intense heat. It looks to have appreciated a little rain and a few cooler days, and is now a tangle of purple flowers, dandelions and towering brown teasels ready for autumn. ☀K

Late summer roses, asters and a mystery flower

The past couple of months have been very busy and warm. The below photographs capture a third flush of roses, pretty asters, a giant himalayan honeysuckle, dried-out teasels, and my dad’s favourites (yellow hellenium). Cosmos, verbena and a self-sown hairy willowherb have been allowed to go as wild as they like as September approaches. I’mContinue reading “Late summer roses, asters and a mystery flower”

Sunny honeys

I was planning on seeing my family today, and made the below bunch for them. …Covid got in the way of that meet-up, so the flowers will come into our kitchen instead. Meanwhile, teasels are beginning to bloom: And clouds of ammi majus: Here’s to more sunny days ahead. 🌞 K