Flower Power

As soon as Andy was out the door to do his once-in-a-couple-of-months Saturday cover for work this morning, I was off into town to the Laura Ashley sale, in pursuit of my mission to cover the entire house in floral wallpaper.

So far, it is going quite well...

And I've chosen and purchased the paper for my arty-crafty writing room. It's a pale cream with little sprigs of pink roses on it, and it looks jolly nice. I have also discovered a new design covered in enormous red poppies, experiencing a moment of what I think is called 'love at first sight'. However, the poopies...poopies?? I mean poppies...would overpower the current room of decorating focus. It was with reluctance then, that I left the Laura Ashley poppy wallpaper in town.

But I'll be back...

I love flowers. I don't know why. But then what is there NOT to like about flowers? I remember as a small child being entranced by little blue flowers which were commonly known as 'cat's eyes', and little red flowers called 'scarlet Pimpernels'. I think they were both weed-type flowers but I loved them nonetheless.

And my grandad grew gladioli, and I was amazed that flowers could be so HUGE and colourful. My gran's front garden was crammed full of roses, and her back garden had a mass of flowers I adored which I now know to be lungwort or pulmonaria. We had a bright yellow laburnum tree in the front garden of the first house I ever lived in, and my abiding memory of that was that we were told NOT to eat it, as it was poisonous and we would DIE! Even if we touched it and licked our fingers! In the second house we lived in, there was a lilac tree on the drive and it's the first time I became aware that tree flowers could smell.

At our primary school there was a huge flowering cherry tree, beneath which us girls used to sit and fashion ourselves hair garlands from the fallen blossoms. And our local church had, and still has, a massive wisteria which was magical to walk beneath after Sunday school. It was like being in a house made of flowers in the summer and twisty, windy woven wood in the winter.

One of the best gardens I have visited is Anne Hathaway's cottage just outside Stratford-upon-Avon. When I imagine the house that will be our forever house, I always walk through a garden just like hers to get to the front door. The front door always has honeysuckle and roses growing around and over the porch and blankets of lavender beneath the windows.

I have to admit there are some flowers that leave me feeling a tad tepid. Cactus, for example. And red hot pokers. I don't understand either of those. Or lilies. But that could be because lilies are poisonous to cats and I love my cats.

In the front garden the bluebells are waiting to burst into flower. And a little violet has been flowering bravely by the front gate since the middle of December. When we moved here, there was a single violet; as the years have passed, it has spread and spread and it has become they and they are the most beautiful colour. Like the ones I used to find on my lone walks in the countryside as a child, when I'd find them in the high banks that lined the lanes, along with celandines and primroses.

Power to the flower - that's what I say!