Ridin' around in your jeep or your Benzos

Summer summer summertime Dj Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince

It has been a gloriously sunny week too bloody hot, but the forecast for the weekend was somewhat apocalyptic.

My heart goes out to brides sometimes. All those cliff top Big Sur weddings on their pinterest boards, all those al fresco tables under festoon lighting. The constant checking of the weather forecast, Flipping between the iPhone and the bbc weather app, and going with the one that looks best. The contingency plans, the white umbrella hire company, and the cheery florist telling you it is good luck if it rains on your wedding day. Not helpful.

Thankfully this weekend it missed us
10 miles away apocalypse
here sunshine
Good times.

The sun continues to rain down on us, the yummy mummys have decamped to their homes in Norfolk and been replaced by the tourists.

The Americans are the most enthusiastic. You can blow their minds by telling them the shop was built in 1463.

To be fair it blows my mind most of the time.

We chat of the differences between the two great nations Sometimes they ask questions and i don't know the answer, it makes you realise how ignorant you can be of your surroundings.

I send them to the library for the answer

or if thats closed just make it up.

also German grand prix, best race of the season so far?

The world was on fire and no one could save me but you

There has been a lot of pink lately, and some starfish. 
Which smell,
potentially even worse than gyp.
Add stocks and mint

It is summer "add stocks and mint" is generally the answer to most problems.

and it is very hot (by English standards) which means that the whole town is animated. There is nothing we like more than a good extreme weather front to moan about.

People you have never spoken to in your life will cross the street to say

"hot enough for you?"

"we shouldn't complain should we? but a drop of rain wouldn't go amiss"

But we do complain, 20 degrees really is the maximum we can cope with here. We know what to do, what to wear.

Above that men start taking their tops off, and i mutter under my breath that this is not Puerto Banus.

Surprising how many people have tattoos that you didn't know about.

and then do you ever get that thing where you hear a word or a place and then it is all you hear for evermore? sort of like Deja-vu but nothing like it. There is town not far from where i grew up that I keep hearing, and then i had a enquiry to do a wedding there. Is it some sort of sign? Or am i part of a weird Derren Brown tv experiment?

Either way.

Road trip.

Chris Isaak

Of nominations and churches

Yesterday The Hound and I discovered this very blog had been shortlisted for a Wedding Magazine Wedding blog award.

I didn't even know we had been nominated, so being shortlisted is lovely. Thank you to whomever nominated us.

We are in the Wedding flower blog category. People who have never read this blog before might find us and think

"What fresh hell is this?"

We aren't exactly big on the wedding flowers lately are we? More grumpiness and the odd bit of food, an half hearted attempts at chiaroscuro.

So here are some wedding flowers from a May wedding, these were taken by my wonderful friend Clara Molden (who wasn't the wedding photographer) i hope to bring you the wedding photographs too with a bride and groom under the arch, and all the tales. It was a glorious wedding.

Bound to win now.

You can vote here if you like.

I should probably mount some sort of kind of campaign to gain votes, but i fall into the camp of self deprecation and awkwardness when it comes to this sort of thing.

My salad days

When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
To say as I said then! But, come, away;
Get me ink and paper:
He shall have every day a several greeting,
Or I'll unpeople Egypt.

Cleopatra by Shakespeare

My garden is so very green, only the lavatera flowers, and as soon as it does I am out there with my  chopping it down for the kitchen table. I seem to have gone so terribly wrong in my planting scheme.
Of course the reality is that my garden is full of roses and cosmos the last of the foxgloves, hydrangea and the like, but I have to snip at everything. I can't help myself. At least you can eat greenery, with a roast chicken stuffed to the gunnels with lemon, garlic and rosemary. A light dusting of salt and pepper and a gentle massage with a bit of olive oil. The crisp crunch of the skin, offset by endless kale smoothies.

Also on the table, dead flowers, they dry in the heat, even in water. People always ask me about drying flowers, i don't know the scientific methods, which involve silica powder, those little bags tucked in bags of beef jerky and new shoes. Save them.

Or just leave the flowers in a vase in a warm room, and let them drink the water and dry slowly. Results  may vary.

and it wasn't until after i had emailed the bride that i realised the grey candles are wrong, it needs to be white, but taller.

These things matter, but to such a very small minority.

Which is easy to forget at times.

Rose covered cottages

This morning i was rudely awoken by the sound of cheeping and banging.
There was a blue tit in my kitchen.
Not in a Mary Poppin's way merrily doing the washing up but flinging itself against the window.
The Hound cowered behind me, he is useless in a crisis.
With the bird freed, I grabbed my camera and went for a walk, rose and hollyhock covered cottages, and flowers in a jug from my garden.
It wasn't until i lifted the camera to take a picture of the hollyhocks that i realised the bird had obviously spent a little time sitting on my camera

Shit happens.