Where does time go? I feel as though the year has barely got going, yet today is August 1st – Yorkshire Day. I’d celebrate with a Fat Rascal if we had any but it’s scorching, so guess what? We can have a scoop of raspberry ripple instead. With poached peaches, drizzled with Mr Simply’s raspberry sauce. He’s appointed himself head chef because Miss Shaddock is now very busy running the flower farm up at The Yorkshire Flower Patch, and word on the street/steep lane is that he’s not bad. In accordance with his efforts to save the planet there are now some delicious vegetarian meals being served daily to guests; not a steak or a lamb chop in sight. Most of them from the Anna Jones cookbooks, although the Yorkshire tea loaf served with morning tea/coffee is still really the rebranded Welsh Bara Brith recipe kindly passed on by Donna at Pheasant Botanica yonks ago.
Today also finds me pondering the 2025 calendar. Thoughts range from whether to do one at all, to whether folk even use them anymore, and, obviously, to the way more important question of which photos to use. What would you really want to see on your desk for a month? What image evokes a certain season, a particular month, and just how do I choose from the ten good ones in June, July and August, when we have an abundance of flowers? Too many flowers, too little time.
In January and February creating those images is much easier. You’d think it might be hard, with the lack of flowers and scarcity of light. But you’d be surprised at how much time I can waste in February on one crocus, in three different vessels, at three different windows, back lit, side lit and maybe with a bit of candle light. What bliss to feel you have the luxury of time on your hands.
As I scroll through the short month of February, scanning for a good snowdrop, I’m taken back to a time when it was a bit traumatic. In amongst the frosty Cambo grasses are photos of a dog with a hole on one eye, photos for the vet of the eye’s progress, two photos of the dog with one eye (looking just like my favourite childhood bear) and, one week later, a dog with no eyes at all. Added to that cruel cocktail of bad luck were various friends suffering grief, floods, illness; pals with parents with dementia and/or children with mental health issues; and an undercurrent of something uncertain that might signify change. I often talk about a change of scene being good for the soul but I much prefer certainty and a quiet life. The benchmark for how bad it was in February was the fact that when every tulip bulb was savaged by local critters, I didn’t bat an eyelid.
It turns out that “change” became a political buzzword and by June the whole country had been catapulted into an unexpectedly-timed general election. And with the possibility of change came uncertainty, and nobody who runs small business likes that. People in business chats reported “quietness” and consumer spending was understandably low. Consolation could be found in roses. Everyone seemed to say it was a good year for them. At long last, after a patient wait of 12 years, I finally have my own Distant Drums. I cut just one tiny flower, because I couldn’t resist, and it was a welcome distraction from the news. It’s a definite contender for Miss June 2025.
All of this meant that the week of the summer solstice, which was to be spent at my favourite place of harmony and relaxation, assumed greater importance than usual. Cambo worked its magic in the way that all gardens do. The first “really proper” summer day came on the day of a class and I don’t need to wax any more lyrical about it because the photos speak volumes.
The rest of the week was spent by the sea, marvelling at the extended daylight hours. I’ve written this somewhere else, but nothing beats the feeling of going to bed in the light, and reading your book whilst also watching the sun set over the sea from the corner of one eye. In fact reading books at all was the best change, because for a while I’d not felt up to tackling anything with more than 250 pages. The long awaited A Gentleman in Moscow was finally conquered and now sits firmly on my list of favourites with others like A Room With A View, Stanley and Elsie, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Shuggie Bain, Atonement, Wolf Hall, The Cazalet Chronicles and Dear Friend and Gardener.
Talking of books, there’s a new cookbook on the shelf: Cafe Cooking by Gillian Veal. Gillian, who runs the cafe at Cambo, happens to be a top chef and excels at vegetarian dishes based on seasonal ingredients, many of which are sourced from the edible garden at Cambo. Into the new Hopewood Baskets latest hand-woven “tub trug” went a perfect picnic, including the vegan haggis sausage rolls that Mr Simply whipped up whilst I was teaching bouquets. We pootled a fair distance down the Fife coastline to the town of Culross (apparently pronounced Cue-Ross). We could have been in a mustard-hued medieval French village were it not for the coach party in their floral co-ords and soft shoes.
The small dog with no eyes (as she has been re-christened by little Olive) seems, four months on, to be doing OK, especially on the wide-open Scottish beaches. The one advantage we have so far found is that on those plentiful days where it’s windy and the swirling sand might prevent other dogs promenading, it no longer matters to Molly, and she enjoys exclusivity at Elie and West Sands.
Ice creams were taken in Pittenweem, with a walk to the house on the rocks on midsummer’s day. Dog-friendly lunches were enjoyed at The Dory bistro and the Kinneuchar Inn. A fancier affogato in Janetta’s with a pal on a warm and very wet day was the perfect end to the week away and we scurried back to cast our votes in Mytholmroyd church hall.
The “change maker in charge”, aka the current Prime Minister, aka “you can call me Kier”, happens also to be my ex-boss from back in my life of crime. In fact he’s the last boss I had. Read into that what you like, because it was “government cutbacks” that turned me to flowers, and that was a coalition of the other two parties. That’s as much politics as I can manage here in my social history document and rest assured that “hereinafter” I’ll stick to flowers – a language I truly understand.
In that short time away the garden really had burst into life. Sweet peas on every corner. The sound of classical music sirening the swaying sunflowers as well as (hopefully) deterring the deer. I’ll not go on about the beneficial effects of picking sweet peas again and instead I’ll highlight how good they look with added mange tout in a tactile ceramic vessel made by Patricia of Blanc Ceramics in Edinburgh. And, to remind me of the Scottish trip, from where I still have the gooseberry branches I “found” over a fence, I also bought a new vessel: one of Charlotte MacCleishes’ tiny stamnos vases. In a blue the colour of the sea, with tiny gooseberries hand painted on the front. Perfect for just a small bunch from the back yard of protected treasures.
And there we are. Into the full swing of summer. Dead heading nasturtiums at every second glance; coaxing dahlias to bloom; disbudding the tiny side buds at the first sign of a juicy main bud, so as to get good long thin stems; getting up at the crack of dawn to open the workshop door and to let in that invigorating early morning air.
July and August often bring to us here in the small corner those who are travelling around England. Two guests from Japan have done their best to persuade me that I really need to see Kyoto and Tokyo, and after a recommendation I read the short book In Praise Of Shadows. But then there’s Venice….and my dream of going on a photography class some time when there are no crowds. And what about Riverdale Farm, Australia and the flower farms of New Zealand?
Top: Mei Chan and bouquet and centrepiece; Chikako Komiya: Bottom: bowl by Chikako
I travelled “very lightly”, with a small sponge bag, down to Bath via Shropshire last week. Mainly to see a flower farm at “full tilt” and also to see one of those aforementioned pals. The garden at Iford Manor might be the nearest I’ll get to Venice for a while yet but, as with all my car journeys, an idea did set seed on the M6 again. In fact next time I need a bright idea I must remember that they often manifest on Britain’s most boring motorway. It’s an idea that will take me some time to research, so maybe expect it to come to fruition next February. It involves words, people and places and a record that fulfils all my desires to document the world of flower growing in current times. And it’s definitely not a book.
Until those quieter, colder months return, with their limited soft moments of light, what of the here and now? Well…there’s that word again. Change. There’s a change happening here as I write. Something old being swapped for something new. An idea conceived by photographer/film maker Sarah Mason over a Friday morning tea and toast chat. A new photo studio. Made out of scented wood. Simple as can be, with just one window. I just hope it works. Time will tell.
Images of student work this Summer: bouquet made by Rachel Ince of The Walled Garden Flower Farm, modelled by Mark McKee aka Welshborn Flowers; middle bowl by Storm Postlethwaite; right-hand bowl by Julia Figarola
Some of my Saturday afternoon flower practice work
