Sunday

1. Gifts from Paris, from a lovely customer, who reports the food here as the menu suggested, is mind-blowing.
2. No weekend is complete without seeing how far you can get without the aid of the internets.
3. The Boy Wonder
4. Filing
5. The fruit bowl
6. Chicken with tarragon and asparagus

Derived from a Nigel Slater recipe, brown the chicken pieces skin side down, it will spit. A lot. This is not the dish to cook if you might be wearing a low cut top or a boob tube. Polo necks only. This is not a date dish, because nobody wears a polo neck on date. This was decided in the pub on Saturday night.

Turn the chicken over, throw in a handful of tarragon, cover and cook until the juices run clear.
Remove the chicken, pour off the fat, deglaze the pan with a glass of white wine.
Add cream, creme fraiche or other dairyness, and another handful of tarragon.Reduce by half.
Return the chicken, poke in asparagus, cook a bit more, add a squeeze of lemon and season.

What i love about Nigel's recipes, is that they are easily adaptable, you could make this with thyme, or mustard instead of the tarragon, or add mushrooms, or other things. I never seem to have all the ingredients for a recipe, even if i set out to.

Did you have a good weekend? Did you cook chicken? Did you wear a boob tube? Does anybody wear a boob tube?

Love-in-a-mist

 

We have given Spring a long lingering kiss, and sent it on it's way, and like hussies have re-applied the red lipstick and opened our doors to Summer.

Like every summer they arrive showy, blousy, flash and with summer tunes blasting from their Lamborghini's. The peonies, stocks and love-in-a-mist have turned our heads. For just a few short months they turn our world upside down, and depart, leaving us with nothing but gladioli to wipe our tears on. Will we never learn?

In amongst all the flash, Allium Christophhii, an intellectual flower if ever there was one. Not like all the others, practically impossible to mix with anything else, and the one i am hanging my hat on this summer.

and embroided name tapes.

and after yesterdays post, and the comments...

We can conclude

1. Boys should always send flowers, and the message should read "I am into you"
2. If you are taken to The Brandenburg Concertos, you are on a date.
3. The gypsies have it right with their grabbing, no misunderstanding.

Have a marvellous weekend, grabbing, concerting or otherwise.
xx

Floristry 20% flowers 80% relationship counsellor

This morning a lady came in clutching a message card from one of our bouquets.

What does this message mean she asked?

Does he want to be friends or more? Because it could mean either, and he hasn’t called since we had dinner, and the message is ambiguous, and i like him but not if he doesn’t like me, and i don’t want to say that i like him, and i am probably not his type. How did he sound on the phone?, like he wanted to ravish me or does he just see me as a somebody to hang out with? I thought i was really obvious that i was into him, maybe i was too obvious maybe that out him off? Or what if he is just really gentlemanly and is playing it slow? Or what if is just not that into me?

And so a plea, to all men, please if you like a girl in a way that one day you might like to lie down with her in the same bed, and that day doesn’t have to be soon, but that that is what you are thinking, please, please for the love of god, hit her over the head with something and drag her back to your cave.

I am a florist not a relate counsellor, i don’t have the answers.

Then later a man came in, and spent a lot of time staring at my breasts (high necked top).

“Seriously” said I, “they are not even on show”

“Sorry” said he

“ You have a coffee stain on your top, and i was just wondering whether to tell you or not”

There is a moral in this tale somewhere, i am just not sure where, or what it is, do you? Do you have advice for the lady? She knows we are having this discussion and is standing by her PC, highly illegally in a fancy corporate office. Share the tales of how you just need to find the exception, because deep down, that is what she wants to hear.


All i know is that i am a klutz when it comes to drinking coffee.

and that it seems yesterday's post is forever lost in the abyss. Maybe it is a sign?

Sticks and stones may break my bones

but chains and whips excite me.
Rihanna

We are exploring a darker side. It started with ornamental cherry, and then the dial on the camera.

In good time we will be back to peonies in rusty milk churns shot at f1.8, and homemade cakes. Just not today. Today we window shopping for shoes.

Also by way of cheesy radio DJ link, we saw the darker side of blogging today. It vanished. Swallowed by the internets.

I remained calm, The Hound being the drama queen he is rushed out for gin and black olive grissini, at times of stress he is all about the carbs.

Thank you to everybody who emailed or tweeted to share in the drama.

Team effort.
xx

Flower school with cameras. Done.

Yesterday was such an amazing day.

I love teaching people about flowers, they come full of enthusiasm and leave with confidence. It is a wonderful transformation to witness, i feel like a proud mother. They learn that it isn't rocket science and neither is there a right or wrong way, apart from if you use gerbera. That is most definitely wrong. On every level.With access to the same flowers, everybody made completely different things. Brilliant.

They also leave with bellies full of homemade rhubarb muffins, and a bag full of vintage jam jars and seasonal flowers.

Yesterday's course however was like no other, as Emily Quinton came too, and in the afternoon we learnt how to photograph flowers. I learnt more in those couple of hours about photography than i could ever have imagined.

I had a eureka moment and have learnt to take the camera off auto, and that there is more to life than a 50mm lens. I know my photographs aren't bad, but that is because for every shot you see here, there are probably another 45 in the camera. I work on the probability that at least one of them might be alright.

Emily taught us to think just a little bit more before pressing the shutter, to look at light, shadows, colour, shapes and backgrounds. Again not rocket science, but i feel quite sure that the photos appearing here will start to improve. I also now know what bracketing is. I feel like i have been let into a secret club.

A huge thank you to all the ladies that came on the course for allowing me to prattle on about my love of flowers, The Hound, and one or two other things....

I can't wait for the next one.

The view from the kitchen table

A cookery book, a 1948 guide for the housewife, and gin.

The housewife guide covers everything from fish filleting to sex instruction. I jest ye not.

The cookery book was a gift, a very good gift. My bookcases groan under the weight of cookery books, but i welcome all new additions, particularly if they come wrapped in fancy ribbon.
It is written by Kerstin Rodgers,the blogger MsMarmiteLover. She runs a supper club, The Underground Restaurant from her home, and that is what the book is about. The how, the why, the how to, a manual with recipes.

You could also treat it as a novel. It is one of those books that you can read in bed, curled up with a glass of gin, or just gaze at the photography and fonts. If it is possible to be in love with a book, i have fallen.

By the end of it you will want to be MsMarmiteLover, dine at her restaurant and ponder the feasibility of throwing Sunday lunches in a flower shop........

It's a sign

in the supermarket this morning, there it was.

I haven't stopped laughing.

Part time King of England, part time chimney sweep, part time checkout operator.

I heard that you're settled down

That you found a girl and you're married now.
I heard that your dreams came true.
Guess she gave you things I didn't give to you.
Old friend why are you so shy?
It ain't like you to hold back or hide from the light.

Genuinely the first song i heard this morning. sometimes they aren't, sometimes they are coded messages to people, dressed up as a "oh i heard this song this morning" But you all knew that. Somebody told me these were the best posts, the ones where i over share. Sometimes it backfires.

Adele can do no wrong. Amazing voice and lyrics and smokey eye make-up.

also this morning, a florist from another town threw herself at my mercy, a mix up, the wrong order made, could she borrow my shop?, and some oasis? and a triple tray? and some foliage, and some flowers?

Of course, come in, let's get you a coffee and a clear work bench.

Karma accrued.

Then a lovely customer emailed to enquire about the origin of one of my skirts, and just dropped into conversation that she was flying by helicopter to Paris, and eating here. I lost myself for a good 20 minutes reading the menu. It is a work thing but still. Paris.

and if all this isn't enough i have guest blogged. In America. The power of the internets never cease to amaze me.

and it is a Grand Prix weekend. Too too much excitement. The Hound has had to have a lie down. Twice.

Jam jars

I still love them, it isn't the actual jar, it is the attitude. The informality, the laissez-faire, the asymmetry, the no foam.

I have however become a jam jar snob. Bonne Maman is so 2007, i now only want proper old jars with "Kilner" written on them, and no gingham ribbon.

Luckily i have Angela, who scored me that massive haul of them. I will be using them in our flower school, not begrudgingly.....

Today is The Other Miss Pickering's birthday. She is away for business in Wisconsin. The last time she went to Wisconsin there was the volcano business and she had to stay for 23 years. I missed her.

Happy Birthday baby sister. Come home soon.

also did you see Antonio and Gennaro on television last night? Driving around Italy being concerned that Italian women don't cook anymore, and hence won't ever find husbands?

Loved it. I used to eat lunch with them everyday in the Neal Street Restaurant. Gennaro would make a pasta al forno everyday and we would eat it with salad and too much bread. Once he made a courgette lasagna, and the courgettes were whole running through the sheets of pasta making waves. Some meals you never forget.

This morning Cityboy1 sent me an email that said "I assume you and The Hound are at the airport checking in on the first flight to anywhere in Italy"

We weren't, but i wish we had been.

Have you voted? Are we Yes or No to AV?

Fay ce que voudras

Do what you will. Or anything goes....

It's all gentrified now, but HH used to be a den of debauchery.

As somebody that works with a lot of venues, one can't really have favourites, but....

If you are an English Rose, and want a small intimate wedding with amazing views and Michelin starred food, and the most helpful staff in the world, and a place that is frequented by Royalty, You might want to look at Hambleton Hall.

The wedding was mainly, mint, lemon balm, jasmine, rosemary, bronze fennel, sorbus, veronica, black elder, honeysuckle, hydrangea leaf, viburnum, Solomon's seal, sage, poppy heads and astilbe.

and Peony, ranucnculus, avalanche, majolica, allium, larkspur, freesia, hydrangea.

The scent was of another world.

If like me you don't have immeadiate plans to be married, just go for lunch. Lunch is better than dinner, more relaxed, and you can sit out on the terrace for hours drinking coffee and eating chocolates, and pretending like you live there.
HH are not paying me to say this, i really do love it.

If they did want to pay me, i wouldn't say no. Obvs. I could be like an ambassador, a live in one.

The Hound would love it.

May

A weekend of weddings, of assessing the full damage the cold winter or The Hound have done to the garden.

My heart is no longer bleeding, i am bereft. Just a patch of earth where once stood a huge plant, that was cut and used in countless weddings. The delphiniums are no more, but bronze fennel stands tall and proud, gently swaying in the wind and scenting the air with aniseed. I used a few pieces in a bridal bouquet, the rest was stuffed into trout and roasted.

I had meant to make baba ganoush, but it seems you cant buy tahini in Rutland. Instead the aubergines were roasted in cumin and zatar and lugs of oil. The aubergines soak up all the oil, which has health freaks running for the hills, but that is why they taste so good. I compromise by heating the oil in the oven first, it goes further. Then whilst still hot, squeeze over the juice of a lemon, fresh mint, and a crumbling of feta.

This morning my hair dryer burst into flames, terrifying. I have put it in the garden.

Also i have had enough of hayfever now, dosing oneself up with anti-histamine and inhalers is dull. I never used to suffer, i once sold a drug for hayfever, and thought anyone that had it was just a wimp. It's USP was that it was thixotropic,not a word have really used since, but quite good for scrabble.

and then a strange thing, i was reading a book and there was Bert. not literally, as it was only a paperback and not a comedy man sized book, but in black and white. Page 108.

This song has been on a loop all weekend.

How was your Bank holiday, did you condense it all into 1 day like us? Can it really be that the wedding was only last Friday?

Royal Wedding windows.

Today seems to have been bereft of all Royal Wedding details, so to quench our thirst for something Kate and Wills related...

1. Blossom Flowers or Mrs B as we all know her.
2. Martin and Magpie3. Green Earth flowers4. The Missing Curtain5. The Tobie Norris6. Miss P. Who forgot to photograph her own window, but it was basically The Telegraph shoot leftovers, repositioned in the window.

and so now what? Do we just keep watching the wedding on the iplayer?

I have post wedding blues, and am completely devoid of inspiration for the window now.

Suggestions if you will.