Oh to be in England, now that spring is here...

We are at the very end of April and the weather is still not very spring like. The winds are howling outside the shop, threatening to blow all our bouquets and potted plants away. Then it started raining furiously, sending huge drops of water down our way. We had to rescue all our bouquets and managed to keep them all still looking fresh and saleable. The things we have to do other than create! I had to keep sane and the only way is to do something different. Mood boards! Off I went to Arte, the art gallery and master framer for some mounting card and paper tape. The past few weeks have been quite inspiring where flowers are concerned. I found various salmon pink spring flowers at the market and simply had to buy them for the shop. They proved to be popular as anemones, ranunculus and lilacs all came in that 'oh-so-gorgeous' shade of pink which in a moment of marketing genius, I termed 'Chanel Pink'. Everyone fell for them.

I mounted each single flower on the board to form a recipe for the bouquets based on that shade and I had to get Tim of Tim Hollis Photography to photograph them. The results are so satisfying that they have now been added to our reference 'library' for all who work at The White Orchid. So the rain did bring some moments of happiness after all! Would you like to see more?

Holiday Musings...

The long weekend has certainly done wonders for me. My head has slowed down, not constantly spinning with ideas to create lovely bouquets for my appreciative clients.

So, the plan to do everything I had wanted to do for a long time, reigns. Delivering flowers to somewhere near Shere, a charming village which has a little stone church and a flowing stream where someone has very thoughtfully built a duck-house for the resident ducks, I started to think of the times when life was less of a rush... visiting the snoring pigs, highly perched on the roof barn owls, crooked-neck goose, flighty bantam chickens and whispering ducks in a farm adjacent to the silent pool. Have you ever felt how quiet and peaceful it is when you stand at the viewing area which used to have a shelter for watching birds?

The drive to the country always make me think of nature as some kind of tonic for the soul. No social media, no distractions, no artificial noise and simply far from the maddening crowd. Bliss.

The countryside also awakens in me the sense of smell - the distant log fire burning, the green of the moss, the fragrance of the fields and the little buttercups that grow along the footpaths.

All these fire up inspiration from long forgotten movies like 'Tess of the D'Urberilles', 'Far from the Maddening Crowd', 'La Gloire de Mon Pere', 'The Secret Garden', and many more...

My latest like is that of 'The Little Paris Kitchen' featuring Rachel Khoo - living in Paris and tasting life through its food and culture. Her 'bonjours' and 'comment?' and 'saluts' egged me to take out my language CDs again and go through the familiar and some not so familiar ways of communicating with the most stylish and charming people over the channel. I would love to live in an apartment with a balcony, throw open the shutters on a warm spring day and simply admire the Eiffel Tower! Vous desirez?