Snapdragon's garden

Happy Tuesday

Today saw the kind of activity that is unusual away from the pre-Christmas period.

Suddenly there was a rush of things to make up, orders to send out,- but by far the most exciting is that the first of the trial flower deliveries is winging its way to London.
It may not work, I may be back to the drawing board to redesign the packaging, many things could go wrong - but at the moment I am sending all my positive energy with it - I so hope that this all works.
This photo shows the bouquet in its box.
From tomorrow I am away for a few days - and when I am not thinking positive thoughts about the delivery, I am thinking  excited thoughts about where I am going.
I am going here to meet this man and to learn about plant dyes and I am so excited.  I am so excited and such a fan that I will no doubt end up speechless and giggly and back at school.

Business blogs

I have been asked by Stirling Enterprise to talk about using blogging as part of a business.  The actual talk will be on Wednesday morning and I am getting my ideas together.
I would be very interested in hearing other people's views on blogs that are parts of businesses - both from the readers and writers points of view.
Thanks - here is a gratuitous photo of one of my chicken helpers,
J
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Narcissi geranium.

Yesterday was the Brownie coffee morning where we trooped down to the village hall to buy home baking and be served coffee and scones by very careful 7 year olds working towards their hostess badges.
We had run out of time for baking anything and the cupboard didn't have anything tombolaish in it so I suggested to Katie that she pick some narcissi and take them.
"But Mummy - can't people just pick daffodils in their own gardens?"
And that sums up succinctly why I don't grow many narcissi. I'm not sure about the rest of the UK, but  in Scotland the market is flooded with cheap narcissi. These are sold at less than the cost of production as they are a by product of bulb growing.
As happens with anything available at low prices, people stop valuing them.  When I had the shop open people just didn't buy narcissi, even when they were unusual scented varieties and looked nothing like the yellow trumpets available elsewhere.
So now the only narcissi that I grow in any quantity are Narcissi "Geranium" -a multi headed tazetta with a beautiful light scent. It has a decent vase life (unlike many narcissi) so can be mixed with other flowers safely.
I have it planted in a broad strip down one side of the grass path - when the flowers come out the scent floats over the garden.  Heaven.

Think Pink

Today is the Think Pink charity ball at Oran Mor in Glasgow- it is a charity raising money to further breast cancer research and has been set up by a local woman.
I volunteered to provide the flowers for the tables and grew a range of pink tulips especially.
The weather has been so cold here that the tulips are really behind so I dug them out of the garden a couple of weeks ago, potted them up and put them on the heated mat in the greenhouse.  Thankfully it worked and mixed with scented white narcissi, lime green hellebores and dark wallflowers the table centres are full of spring freshness.
As the flowers in their dogwood vases will be raffled off tonight I included some blooms  that are yet to come fully out so that people get some joy out of them when they take them home.
I am sure it will be a great night and that a lot of money will be raised forthis great cause.  I shall not be dancing the night away however but rather helping at the school beetle drive, aiding 5 year olds with their adding up.

Counting my ducklings

These are the duck eggs - hopefully fertile - brought round by Craig yesterday .  I moved Peblo to an old converted pine chest which we used as a rabbit hutch for a while - that keeps her unmolested by the other hens and lets us keep an eye on her.  I checked that she stayed settled overnight and this afternoon I put the ten beautiful duck eggs under her.
I have just been to check on her and she looks very serene, all puffed up filling half the house and radiating heat.
I already have visions of ten little ducklings trooping after their mother hen . . . . count . . .count . . . count

A room of my own

There have been a lot of photos of desks in weblogs recently - and finally I have a desk that can be photographed.
It is very interesting - since I have had a dedicated workspace I have had a character transplant.  For the first time in my life I have become house proud - well caravan proud to be accurate.
This morning I got very grumpy when I found biscuit crumbs and abandoned novels in my caravan.  Like a vacuum a tidy space seems to attract chaos - children have been there.
It is so wonderful to have my own space and it has encouraged me to become much freer with what I am doing - yesterday I was working on these sketchbooks embroidered with drawings of snakeshead fritillaries.  It was one of those days when I felt that I had taken a great step forward . . .
My next newsletter is out, mainly about fritillaries - email me if you want to join the subscription.
J
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Chickens scratching about the place

Its funny how easy it is to get out of the habit of blogging - it makes me realise that I am an all or nothing kinda girl. 
And the problem is that if I'm not writing a blog, I m not taking photos either.  This week I have taken no photos at all of the garden, no photos of the embroideries that I have squeezed in amidst children, indeed no photos of the children either.
It is just about dusk so I have dashed outside to get a couple of shots of chickens just to liven this up a bit.
Actually I am much better photographing chickens than the garden at the moment. The weather has been fine but so, so cold and everything is behind.  It is just stuck in suspended animation waiting for some warmth.
I don't blame it - this morning when I was picking flowers for subscription customers my hands turned blue it was so cold.
So the best thing in the garden at the moment is definitely the chickens.  This is Treela - the one who want to be a house chicken - scratching about in the bed which I am clearing for the sweetpeas.

And this is Chico - a beautiful puffy Light Sussex which is one of the chickens that hatched last year.

Rather excitingly Peblo - cuckoo maran and super-mum has become broody today - she is puffed up in the corner of the hen house like a feathery radiator. 
We have had problems in keeping ducks here - the last lot pined for their home at Craigievern, ran away the first week and then, after they had been brought back, refused to lay for us.  They were sent home to the Harrowers and immediately laid so it was obviously us.
Jane suggested that if we hatch out ducklings then they will settle much better.  I texted her as soon as Peblo took to brooding so, if Peblo is still settled in a couple of days, we shall put some duck eggs under her and wait for the patter of tiny webbed feet.
I can't wait for I love having ducks about the place.

Secret sketching

I am a very secretive sketcher.  Aside from my children, I don't think that anyone has seen me draw since schooldays.

When I dug out my drawings of the garden to work up as the meadow cushions most people were surprised to find that I sketched at all.
This is largely because I am not a natural sketcher - I have never been able to draw things in a straightforward representative way. 90% of my drawings are a bit wonky, they are a way of looking at things rather than a finished artwork.
It is this lack of drawing ability that has led me to feel all my life that I am not "artistic" - looking back this is obviously balderdash but it is powerful none the less.
I now see Zoe shying away from drawing because she feels that the things that she draws look wrong.  I had hoped that art teaching in schools  would have changed.  I hoped that it would no longer just be the children who were adept at copying that would be regarded as the creative ones with the children who respond to colour, pattern or structure becoming disillusioned.  It seems not.
Anyway as part of my attempts to take my own drawing more seriously and thus encourage Zoe, I made us a couple of covered sketchbooks and, as these things seem to go, made a few more for sale at fairs.  They were popular so I have now put the smaller size one which also works well as a notebook  onto the website.
    I am very particular about notebooks - one of my bugbears is buying a beautifully covered notebook and then finding that the book inside is one of those cheap and nasty 30p ones that are just not nice to use. Because these have high quality artists sketchbooks inside they are lovely to write on whether it is a shopping list or a poem - they can also be easily replaced when full at any artshop.
The removable cover is a felted woolly blanket and is washable on a gentle wool wash cycle.
The top design, of the growing grass (briza maxima since you ask!) is the one on the website - the other which is a version of Zoe's book, is destined for a giveaway on the next newsletter (out on 21st) - e-mail me at snapdragonjane@googlemail.com ifyou want to subscribe.
Both photos c.Jane Robertson 2008.

Country mice and city cousins

I don't tend to re-read books all that often but one book that I come back to time and again is a memoir by the French writer Colette - two memoirs in fact - Sido and My Mother's House.
In these Colette reminisces about her rural French childhood - idyllic days spent roaming the countryside climbing trees and foraging for berries - returning to a family dinner, summoned by her mother's bell.
This is the exact childhood that I would like for my girls. We moved here partly so that it would be more possible - I have the summoning bell.
This week, playing with their cousins, they have been absorbed in making dens, playing on the rope swing down by the river, collecting eggs (poor hens, their eggs are carted away as soon as they hit the straw)and walking Jasmine down to the field along the road to take photos of horses.
I suspect that it is having town visitors that has made my little country mice appreciate what they have - as I speak they are cleaning out the guinea pig, a job that usually takes a 3 day build up of nagging.
I am very glad that they have been keeping themselves amused as it is increasingly apparent that there are very good practical reasons why I stopped at 2 children.  Having four turns out to be an awful lot of work and a lot of washing.  My hat goes off to all who manage millions of children.
We give Christine and Jayde back to their Grandma on Monday - they will be missed (until their Summer visit).

#Photo of bees on hellebore by Jane Robertson

Busy week ahead

The school breaks up for the 2 week Easter break this afternoon. I am arranging flowers for a wedding in Fife this weekend and the girls' cousins Christine and Jayde are coming to stay for a week.
Building work will hopefully start on our extension and I have to get to work on a very exciting project - my first commission designing for a different medium.  I don't want to say anything about this at the moment as I am very nervous and excited by it and don't want to jinx the whole project.
Anyway the upshot is that I don't think that I shall have much time for blogging so I may be away for the next week.
Then again I may find that I miss the head space that writing this gives me each day. We shall see.
No matter what I doubt that I shall be able to keep away for long - definitely back after 12th.
J
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Photo of my poor wind ravaged (but still stunning) hellebores c. Jane Robertson