Sue at Backlane Notebook has set herself a challenge to cut greenery and, if possible, flowers from her garden during the winter. Hedgerow finds are allowed if things get desperate. I’m a latecomer to the project but I thought I’d venture out to see if there were any spots of colour. I was surprised at what I found amongst the crispy perennials and dead leaves.
I think the prolonged warm weather in autumn kept things flowering for longer and brought forward some Spring favourites*. I bunged them in a cheery tomato can and the table looked brighter immediately.
Tomorrow I’ll be hosting a bloghop for January’s Making Winter Week. The focus will be on wintry comfort. We’ll be sharing cheery creativity to help us through to Spring. Click the link or the Making Winter partcipant list at the top of this page to find out more about the project.
It would be especially fantastic to build up a resource of easy-ish baking recipes for everyone to call on during grey days when we could all do with a pick-me-up. If you’ve got a good comfort baking recipe and don’t mind sharing it then join in with the bloghop and Thriftyhbousehold and I will collate an online Baking Winter Cookbook.
*I found fennel (both flowers and new ferny leaves), winter-flowering jasmine, a hellebore, ivy berries and leaves, wintersweet (the latter two are favourites of Alice) cotoneaster, perennial wallflower, snowberry, and viburnum.
Very cheering!
Astonishing.
Inconceivable…given that it was 8 degrees F here this morning, with 8+ gorgeous inches of snow.
I love the tomato can & garden/hedgerow gleanings! I'll have a think along foodie lines for your recipe anthology…
What fantastic garden finds and they do look so cheerful in that colourful can.
My favourite kind of bouquet. It looks so pretty and cheerful. Love the patchwork in the background too!
I feel a joke post coming on, as I show the world the brown, crunchy, frozen items I am able to assemble from my garden and environs. Your collection is gorgeous, and most cheering. xo
What a good idea to make a bouquet with flowers from the winter garden. Your looks very sweet!
Madelief x
It is amazing what the garden offers when you really poke about isn't it?!
I am feeling very joyful about plum cobbler at the moment and will add it to your link-up. x
What a beautiful bouquet Emma.
Note to self – buy classier tomatoes.
It's amazing what you can find isn't it! I've been having such fun with the challenge and picked some viburnum myself today.
Love the idea of baking winter!
From where I sit those flowers look nothing short of miraculous. (We just climbed out of a below-zero cold snap. It was a torrid 20ยบ F today.)
Beautiful!
My back garden is fairly barren apart from my viburnum – in fact the garden has largely been neglected for the last four years or so since we got the allotment so its barren-ness shouldn't be a surprise to me. But I am enjoying my windowsill treats of tete-a-tete and muscari :o) Lucy xx
Hmm.. just spent a day in the garden (with help) reorganising it. might have some colour in a week or so when the survivors get started again!
Don't you just love ivy berries and their two tones? :O)
Beautiful. Your photographs have wintry gleam.
Beautiful arrangement Emma, enhanced by the tomato tin in a way that wouldn't be possible if a conventional vase had been used. Lovely. x