Snapdragon's garden

A time to plan . . . please!

We are now into the second week of the School Holidays and the "I'm bored . . .What can I do . . .I don't want to help with deliveries" has begun.
I love the school holidays - I love the fact that we don't have to rush about in the morning and I appreciate so much that my job allows me to be at home with the children and means that I don't have to cobble together childcare for them over the holidays.
But I do have a job.  And I do need to have some quiet, uninterrupted time to plan what needs to be done in the next 6 months, and I am just getting absolutely none of that at the moment.
An important part of my business is letting the children know that I do work - I learned a lot from my Mother working at home - it is an important part of the process.  I am also very lucky that I can scale down aspects of my job to fit around the children - and lots of things - seed sowing, flower picking, packaging can be done alongside their playing.  The need to spend at least part of the day at home working also stops me from cramming their holiday with "activities" and in theory gives them some much needed self starting down time.
This week we have had the house full with a joyful throng of visiting children - playing schools, painting banners, baking and whining about watching tv.  I have loved it but now I just want to go and curl up somewhere quiet and write some to-do lists.
What a BAD Mummy.

Dream Acres

When you are a small hand-making Scottish business you soon become aware of others ploughing the same furrow.  I first became aware of Karon Grieve and her business Dream Acres in Spring 2006 when this small scented mouse appeared in Country Living Magazine's Emporium section  (Well not this actual one as he belongs to Zoe- but another very similar!).  I was impressed with the quality (sadly not always the case with small businesses), cuteness and the long, leathery tail.
I met Karon in person at last year's Country Living in Glasgow where she had the cutest stall, centered around a rescued and restored handcart - much admired by Annabel Lewis of VV Rouleax who felt (along with me) that it should have won best stall.
We kept in touch and, at the beginning of this year, we both found ourselves needing to move our businesses onto the next level so that we could make some proper money.  So we formed formed a bit of a bolstering support group we call Sow Sew Scottish - We are unusual in that we both have businesses growing and sewing things (Karon grows the herbs for the sophisticated blends that fill her products) and also in our commitment to sell unique things that we have created, rather than supplementing with bought in things. 
It has been an interesting process - and I think that having someone to bounce early prototype ideas of has been invaluable for both of us.
Anyway, Karon has just been re-vamping her website and has incorporated a secret page full of tips and special offers which can be accessed if you e-mail her.  It is well worth a look - and for anyone who will be attending the Country Living Fairs in either London or Glasgow this year I recommend signing up for her special offers - I know she has something very special planned for these 2 Fairs.
Thank you for all the get well soon e-mails.  I feel rather a fraud as it was really only a cold - I am a terrible patient though.

Poppy meadow

The poppies in the meadow have begun to bloom.
Each year they seem to come up a different colour - this year they are a pink toned red with a good black splotch.
I shall try to draw them this week I think - before they become seedheads.
It is these poppies, escapees from the cutting garden into what we term (very loosely and somewhat optimistically) the meadow, that are the inspiration for my embroidered meadow cushions.
Since they have been featured in Country Living Magazine's Emporium section I am quickly running through my roll of vintage French hemp - there is perhaps enough for 5 more.
I will do the design in a different fabric but I thought it best to let you know, just in case there is anyone who wants this type of rumply rustic background.

More roses . . .

I think that I may have given the mistaken impression in my last post that I do not like roses.  In fact I love roses - I just have a problem with a flower which is in essence fleeting - the pinnacle of the June garden - become a year round commodity.  In my comment I compared it to a strawberry - people eat strawberries in December because they can - but they are getting a far lesser fruit and in some ways spoiling the June feast by making strawberries commonplace.
Anyway to prove that I do in fact love and plant roses in my own garden . . .
This is a multi header climber trained along the front fence.
A rambler headed up into hawthorn trees along our boundary - I feel that this may turn out to be a mistake in a few years time but at the moment it is glorious with great wands of flowers blowing in the breeze.
and my favourite rose in the garden - William Lobb - a triumph of hope against experience as he gets besmirched so easily in the rain.
Still on a rose theme - I was in town yesterday and picked up a copy of Martha Stewart Weddings (and it is interesting that US wedding magazines don't have the rose obsession of the Brits).  In it was this.

And I shall quote the caption "These pink Sally Holmes roses lasted only 2 hours after they were wired.  But for one bride, this was a once in a lifetime chance to carry them and her florist made her bouquet just minutes before the ceremony.  The results were worth it."
That sounds like extreme floristry to me.

Roses

Roses are the flower that cause me the most trouble.
I don't really grow roses bar a few ramblers and old roses.  We have too wet a climate to grow them successfully without resorting to sprays and that is something I am determined not to do.
Yet roses are one of those flowers that people request - particularly brides.  Roses are lodged in our consciousness as the flower of romance.
I do not grow roses.  Over the past year - a year suffering from what Sally calls "the curse of the Ecuadorian rose" - I have had to come up with solutions for brides who have their hearts set on rosy bouquets.
Normally I can steer brides away from roses towards something else that they like even more than the roses.
However, when Lynn, whose wedding was yesterday, turned up with inspiration photos last year it was clear that a simple steer wouldn't work - every photo was of Ecuadorian roses, no foliage, no other flowers.
So I bit the bullet, worked out where I stood and suggested that we buy some roses in from The Real Flower Company and supplement these with my roses (moss roses and ramblers) and some peonies.

I chose The Real Flower company largely because I have met its owner Rosebie Moreton and she seemed very down to earth, and partly because the only other company growing old fashioned roses in Britain is run by someone whom I met when I was working in art galleries aged 22.  This person (who shall remain nameless) was so snootily condescending to me back then that I could not in all conscience put money in her pocket now.  Easy decision.
In the end the result was very pretty - most of the bought in roses were used to put into napkins at the reception - and a few were mixed into a bouquet alongside the sumptuous William Lobb moss rose, pink  peonies and a small flowered blue/purple climber. 
I am still in two minds about the whole rose thing though - I think that it is caused in large part by 99% of the bouquets in wedding magazines including roses, something inspired by their availability all year round in all colours, rather than any intrinsic rosy qualities.  It is spring? - lets use pale roses and tulips; autumn? - rust coloured roses and hypericum; its winter? - how about red roses and pine needles. 
Recently I was interviewed by the American writer Amy Stewart for a British edition of her fantastic book Flower Confidential.  It is one of those habit changing books that open your eyes to the way a business works.  If you are prepared to never be able to buy roses again without a whole load of questioning read Chapter 6 on growing roses in Ecuador.

Oh what a cheery post!  Can you tell I'm in bed with a cold?

J

x

Bathtub beauties

This week I am busy organizing flowers for a wedding near Stirling on Friday. and no-one has been able to get near the bath.
First it was full blown peonies floating there to condition them for the bouquet

  It lets the petals take up water and stops them wilting.
Now - and far less glamorously - it is full of artemesia which has a bit of a black fly infestation.  A squirt of washing up liquid in the water and they all float off.  Yumm.
Can't have a church full of aphids.

Next newsletter out

I have just posted out by e-mail the latest edition of Snapdragon's newsletter.  This time there are instructions on how to make bunting
How to fashion a simple buttonhole for summer weddings
and a special offer on my caravan notebooks
If anyone wants to get a copy (absolutely free - easily stoppable - guaranteed no spam) send me an e-mail at snapdragonjane@googlemail.com

Bobbling along

I cannot throw things away. The smallest scraps of beautiful materials are carefully stowed - just in case . . .
I have now found a solution - a simple modification to my button badge maker and I can make hair bobbles out of all the pieces that are too small for anything else.
Katie has been trialling them for me - she has had unusually neat hair this week - her bobbles of choice are made from a 1950s cotton with sugar pink rosebuds.
I shall be at The Green Fair in Dunblane this Saturday (Victoria Halls, 10-3) - come and say Hi if you are passing - it looks like there will be lots of good stalls.  I shall be there behind a great heap of bobbles - it turned out to be rather addictive.
J
x

Colouring up

There has been a bit more colour creeping into my work recently.

Some of thats down to the design project that is still under wraps. But I also found that I missed it.  However, the month of so of monochrome has led to a lot more restraintin the way I work.  For the mystery design project (goodness at this rate it is going to be such an anti-climax when I finally reveal the products) I had 6 colours to work with.   I couldn't just empty the scrap bag and get stitching,  I had to think about it all in a more considered and disciplined way.
I think that this new approach it has carried onto these caravan notebooks which will be going up on the website in the next week or so -

I am really pleased with them - especially the backs.
After a month of so of sunshine we are now deep in drizzle - I need some sunshine to take photos of bunting for my newsletter.

Blue skies

Thank you to everyone for their lovely comments and emails, for the wise words and encouragement.  It is all appreciated a lot.
Thank you particularly to the reader who phoned up her friend Fiona and said that I was looking for help.
 Fiona came round to see me today and will start helping me tackle the weeds on Thursday.

Yesterday evening I lay on the deck by the airstream and looked at the sky - it was amazing, great long wisps - it stopped the wobbles.
Onward and upwards indeed