Sweet pea love

This year we've had a magnificent display from our everlasting sweet peas, and they've flowered for the longest I can remember. There's still one flower out now, although it's dying out now and I think it'll be the last.

I wasn't sure if they'd return this year, what with the fence work we had done earlier in the year I thought they might have migrated to the other side of the fence, but luckily they hadn't. They had moved half a metre or so towards the house, but they were still there.

They say you should keep cutting sweet peas to encourage them to keep flowering, and it's true I've cut them more this year than any other year. Perhaps that's it, who knows.

I've been photographing them since June, and as the last flower's almost done it seems right to share the photos now.

After flowering later than usual, when they got going they really got going and shot up over the fence and onto the trellis above. 

I couldn't resist poster-ising them either. 

They were in the house too, where they did this weird thing of turning white. I think it makes them even more beautiful. 

And that brings me to the most recent photos, and what I think will be my last sweet pea of the year. 

The leaves though are showing signs of a tough summer

But still there are young, lush green shoots among the older leaves. I can't see them doing anything flower-wise, but I'll be happy to be proved wrong!

So just as these finish my dad tells me I can sow the seeds he gave me which featured as my black and white photo last Sunday. 

A hard-working and productful Norfolk garden

For this week's How Does Your Garden Grow I'm sharing photos of my Dad's garden in Norfolk. When we visited this weekend it was choc-a-block with produce and dahlias and more and provided the flowers and greenery for Mum's Harvest Festival flower arrangement.

Up until recently Dad also had an allotment, but now he grows his fruit and veg in the back garden alongside his flowers and more usual back garden accoutrements! This means it's made to work hard but it seems to be doing ok...

There's plenty of runner beans, which is good as they're a family favourite. 

And there's still more to come

The onions (these are just some of them) are drying

The pumpkins are ripening in the greenhouse - and check out that ginormous geranium in the background. Dad assures me it's just one plant - the good news is I have some cuttings!

The marrows are as huuuge - and as plentiful - as always

And there's a whole forest of tomatoes

And we haven't even started on the flowers yet...  I'll warn you now I couldn't decide which to leave out, so here they are - grab a tea and a biscuit before you start scrolling down...

Let's start with some roses, this one's my favourite of the two:

Some anemones

And the dahlias - oh the dahlias - reds, oranges and pinks

And a hollyhock, on the pink side of things, of course

Plus frilly, full-skirted ballerina-like fuschias

And remember my vintage sign?  Well, it's clearly hereditary!

As well as the dahlias which always seem to signal the end of summer, Dad's garden has a couple of more autumnal additions, there's these berries - we've no idea what the plant is, but we know it had a pink flower...

And I'd forgotten about these Lords and Ladies, which we've seen a lot of in National Trust gardens recently. I'm not quite sure what they're doing hiding under the climbing rose, but it's good to see them there. 

And finally I'm finishing on a Passion flower - they're favourites of mine anyway, we had one in our garden when we moved in but somewhere along the way we lost it. I keep meaning to replace it but I've not quite got there yet. The reason that this one has made me smile is because it's the cat-equivalent plant, in that this plant prefers to spend time with its neighbours!

It's pretty rampant with plenty of flowers on Dad's side, mostly it's nestled in the winter jasmine but there's also some tendrils coming into the garage. These I think might be encouraged into a pot to see how they like that...  I think Dad would like that and I know I most definitely would too!

So that's quite a trip around Dad's garden, and as you can see there's plenty to see at this time of year.

Flower arranging for Harvest Festival at St Edmunds

This weekend saw us pop up to Norfolk for the first time in a long while.  We arrived eventually after one of the worst journeys through gridlocked South East London ever!  Which meant we were way too late for even a sniff of any fish and chips...  Next time...

On Saturday morning I was roped in/volunteered to help Mum with her flower arrangement for Sunday's Harvest Festival.  I'm not sure who was most worried, as I think it's fair to say that we're more at the "plonking in a vase" end of the scale of flower arranging... 

But one of the ladies from the Church had provided a flower arrangement receptacle so we thought we'd better have a go at filling it up! 

After a scout around the garden we found these, which included geraniums, dahlias, olive branches, some grasses and some berries.

It took us a while, but it didn't turn out too bad - even if it was a bit skew-whiff on the base!  It wasn't until we'd finished that Dad offered some of his pinker dahlias, which would have been a dead giveaway to the flower arranger's identity - but we were done, and happy with our reds.

So our next job was to deliver it safely and in one piece to the Church - St Edmunds in Hunstanton - and place it in Mum's designated spot.  Once there, we shuffled some baked beans and mandarin segments to make room for it and stepped back to admire our masterpiece!

It actually looked OK - I think we were both relieved!

I think ours was probably the last flower arrangement to be added, and the Church was already starting to look good with its harvest displays.  And as you'd expect for harvest there were lots of reds, yellows and oranges.

I was pretty taken with this sunflower arrangement, and the clever use of allium seed heads (we could have done this, if we'd had some alliums and thought of it!)

And this one which had incorporated apples (which is way too advanced for Mum and I!)

On Saturday lunchtime this marrow was looking a little lonely!  But it reminded me of Harvest Festivals when we were growing up when we'd each decorate, I think what was a cardboard mushroom box (with a handle too!) from the market behind Mum's work, carefully arranging the produce available before carrying them to church on Sunday morning and joining the procession along with the other children to hand them over.

It's strange how one marrow can trigger memories from my childhood.  Usually marrows trigger the stuffed marrow kind of memory so it was a surprise for this one to prompt something different!

St Edmunds is a grand looking church which opened in 1866 and here's a picture of the inside.  If you're ever in Hunstanton and are looking for a church service be sure to pop your head round the door of this one, I'm sure there'll be a friendly welcome.

What memories do you have of Harvest Festivals? And did you take part in a Harvest Festival this weekend?