fresh from the garden: hand-cut bouquets

With summer almost here, my garden is full of color. Poppies, love-in-the-mist, pincushions, chive blossoms, english and spanish lavender and peonies are all in bloom around my garden. They are a great reward for all the planting I've been doing! Some flowers like the peonies and camelia were already here when we moved in, but everything else has been planted by us. Some from seed or bulb or tuber, some as plantlings.

One day last week, after our walk to the library, the girls and I decided to cut some flowers for a bouquet to put on our dinner table that night. Both girls are pretty proficient with scissors, so I let them cut a few blooms for their own bouquets.

Zara cuts a poppy for her bouquet. I planted these from seed last spring. They came back lovelier than ever.

After the tulips faded in early spring, these poppies were one of the first flowers to bloom. They are on their way out, but they've lasted a few weeks already.

Love-in-the mist overtaking my English lavender. My girls are ready to cut some for their bouquet. (Sofia pronounces it  "bo-kwet"). I also planted these last year. 

Such an usual flower, love-in-a-mist is a wildflower that I planted from seeds last year. After the flowers were spent, little seedpods remained. On the advice of a neighbor, I crushed the pods and sowed them again. It worked!

An aerial shot - can you see the English lavender mixed in?

And here are their beautiful bouquets.

 

Lovely! And here's what they looked like in a few recycled jars on our outdoor dining table that night.

I love hand-cut flowers, don't you? But of course, I also love them in the garden. Would you like to see more flowers from my garden?

A closer look at the English lavender. Smells so good!

Apparently ants on peony buds are a common thing.

I can still see some ants on this peony bloom. These are the easiest flowers to maintain! I don't really do a thing to make these bloom. 

Wide shot of the peonies which I recently staked with bamboo stakes. Otherwise, the would be laying on the ground, the blooms are so top-heavy!

I believe this is a camelia. It has white petals, yellow stamen and evergreen leaves. It's bloom on the side yard in a fairly shady area.

This is Spanish lavender. We have 4 or 5 bushes in the backyard. Bees love them.

Foxglove. Adds height to the garden! We borrowed these from a trail. So far, they survived the transplant.

I have more than a dozen daylilies in the front and back yard. They are really easy to grow. This yellow one is one of the first to bloom.

 I bought these geraniums last weekend from our local nursery and haven't planted them yet but I have them on our stone bench for now.

I have 3 varieties of these pincushions - two shorter purplish ones and a taller pink one that hasn't bloomed yet.

Hope you enjoyed the little garden tour of my home!

Believe me, I am still amazed that all of these flowers are blooming. I never really had a green thumb.....until I moved to a house of my own. It helps that we get our fair share of rainfall here in Washington so I don't have to remember to water them all the time.

Anyway, if you have some garden photos to share, I'd love to see them. Please leave me a link.

As always, thanks for stopping by!