Baby, not blooms today. My midwife has told me to have my bags packed and ready for the hospital…this has caused a reality check on the boat, features piles of pretty, heavy breathing, fairy lights, a lavender spritzer and a secret stash of drugs…

Nope I have not been watching One Born Every Minute but Mr Kipling slices, Zoe Williams telling it how it is, garden fete mysteries…smallable sweetness and the plan of a birthing pool swimming with sweetpeas feature highly. Squeak!

xxx

… or a hortense if we’re at home in France amongst Ma and Pa’s hedgerows of huge blue, pink and mauve pom poms.

Weddings we dedicate to them, heads of fashion houses request and I always try to save one from jobs for a favourite vase.

I loved them last year…and then some and with the season upon us, this year still.

xxx

Two massive cherry trees overhang the boat and when its windy the fruit is like hailstones against the portholes…now ripe I’ve started picking them, giving them to fruit loving friends and trawling through recipe books.

Removing their pips is a bit of a fag but I’m on a promise that if I make this, Captain’ll do the pipping.

My favourite foodie, Yotam’s a sucker for a deep red stargazer and anything vermilion in the floral dept too – what’s not to love about all things Ottolenghi?

xxx

P.S Maman, I found your table cloth.

A day in the life … it’s also been a peony and hydrangea week.

We’re melting on the towpath but the promise of midnight row boating and bit of Jazzy Jeff is keeping us cool.

Happy saturdays

xxx

Apart from canal side prettiness I don’t wax on enough about all the nature by our boat that often, but finding the terrapin who is now living between ours and a neighbours boat munching on lettuce, made me realise how lucky we are.

Yes I could do without the naughty nameless beast eating my sweetpeas and the slugs and the hideous amount of spiders that congregate right about now… but I’ll keep the charming owls that keep us awake in the graveyard, the naughty fox who knows no shame, the geese, the ducklings, the big fat hedgehog under our fig, the moor hens..the spooky stalk, the eels and the giant chubs, the lonesome swan and more.

Our natural neighbourhood, you can stay.

xxx

Slowing down like the sweet tortoise I found in the canal this morning it’s all about trying to sleep and nesting for Missy’s arrival…

Lulu and Nat loveliness , garden roses ruling and wondering if the three of us can get away with a boat, a taxi and a lilliput caravan?

And dear Green hat, ta, a lovely read.

xxx

P.S (darling fairy godmother Natasha- thank you for my flowery frock x)

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You can’t beat a delciious fresh posey of roses but that said if you are going to go leftfield then check out this lovely paper flower discovery…

xxx

Can you tell? Coveting cushions of the Chloe Sofa type and a job for Anthropologie has had me sidestepping and mooching around their delicious site, why wear my moody black apron for my flowers when I can don something pretty?

xxx

In no particular order a posey for a Beatle girl, topping up on ravishing ribbons at Temptation Alley, being absconded by Ian Broudie on the state of a bird pooed Mabel ( that’s my taxi not a friend), a page turner with my new heroine, Iris Storm.…and continued tug boat tweaking of the towpath garden variety.

Rivers? Well a canal counts, no?

xxx

And flowers for Mr T, a powder puff shoot requiring peonies and a monday morning xxx