Today’s vase celebrates nature, folklore and the nature of persistence. I wanted to capture the most abundant and rapidly growing specimens in the garden, and so gathered a small posy of yellow and purple, supplemented with twirling foliage.
Ironically, I had selected one of my tinest vases, which could only contain a few of these multi-petalled custard yellow beauties.
Undoubtedly, taracaxum is the star of this show, with its big blousy blooms with their delicate fibonician display of up to 200 individual petals.
I’ll share this little vase of early April blooms with Cathy and the gang at in a vase on Monday, where each week gardeners share pictures of what’s blooming in their gardens….Rambling in the garden
Taracaxum are taking over parts of the garden, following last years intensive efforts by my husband to remove them. (On the day it seemed to snow with their ‘clockhead’ seeds he retreated indoors, hung up his weeding trowel, and had a quiet little sit down.)
Still, the big yellow blooms don’t have all the vase space today. I also included some of this lovely Lamium purpureum which pops up everywhere at this time of year, and is noted for its tenacity.
“Popping up in the earliest spring-like moments, purple deadnettle is a maideny herb. In older folklore it was said to be a cheerful herb that makes the heart merry. It grows enthusiastically were groundcover is patchy or where the soil has been disturbed, pointing to a tenacious nature and the ability to make something lovely and useful out of a barren environment.”
The display is completed with every gardeners favourite foliage, the Convolvulus arvensis which is welcomed whenever and wherever it pops up to choke and destroy whatever the gardener had actually planted into that spot.
In England, in 1633, Gerard wrote in his Herball, “…Bindweeds are not fit for medicine but are unprofitable weeds, and hurtfull unto each thing that groweth next unto them.” ( p. 864). The first record of field bindweed in North America was in 1739 in Virginia. It probably arrived in the ballast of ships but may have also been a contaminant of imported seeds.
Next week, I’ll return to offering a more conventional and less weedy selection in a vase on Monday, but this seemed like a fun selection for April 1st.
I hope your plants, plans and even the weeds are coming along nicely.
Jen x
Doing The Plan 
Oh you are a tease, Jen – in the end I read your post cvery slowly just to make sure! But it shows how we often dismiss ‘weeds’ without a though whereas in fact they are often very pretty in their own right. Thanks for sharing and making me smile 🙂
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That’s one fancy dandelion! Displaying it as you did and photographing it in close-up, you could have convinced me it was a chrysanthemum.
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That is exactly what I was thinking. They look like big fancy dandelions! . . . or chrysanthemums . . . or dahlias.
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