It is hard to convey just how wet the end of May has been here. In Paris the Seine has broken its banks, and here the non-stop rain is making my garden rather unhappy.
When the garden gets too wet, and the flowers are beginning to give up the fight, the best solution is just to go ahead and pick them and enjoy them inside the house. Just bring those roses and peonies into the dry.
So today I took a secateur and chose some peonies and some Constance Spry roses, mixed in with a few Iceberg, some Nigella and the Cerinthus that I love so much.
Hopefully the sun will return this week, and the garden will perk up, but in the meantime at least I have a couple of bouquets on tables and fireplaces.
Hope you all have a lovely weekend, thank you for reading me.
56 comments
Beautiful!! Thank you for sharing !!
Absolutely stunning arrangements, Sharon! LOVE!!!
We have had the same problem in Texas….too much rain….but your flowers are prettier than mine….
These are just gorgeous and a great mood booster.
Soaked in Dallas.
Lovely bouquets , Sharon. Month of May was non- stop rain here in central Pennsylvania and June not much better so far!
On a wet Sydney morning your pics have inspired me to get out my pewter pedestal cake stands, give them a polish and place a vase on top so between the showers I can quickly snip a few roses and rescue them from the deluge we are expecting. Thanks for flowers!
Yes wet up here too Vicky in Mid north coast! Too late to snip today.
Love the beautiful arrangements! Peonies are my favorite flower.
Those flowers are so gorgeous & none worse for the wear of the rain Sharon. The peonies are absolutely breathtaking as well as the all the flowers in your arrangements. X
Just lovely… Enjoy your posts very much.
It’s raining so much here in Texas too. Flooding and such. We are so similar. 😉
In our region, peonies open up along with the heavens! Guaranteed! We get a short week of beautiful blooms so we must enjoy them while they last. Once again Sharon, you give us outstanding photography and glorious flowers! Thanks for sharing!
Just beautiful, Thanks for posting.
Can’t have peonies in the desert. Such beauty. Thanks for sharing. AFN
The rains notwithstanding, your flowers are fabulous…thank you for posting photographs of them! We here in N.W. Oregon are enduring above-average temperatures, right now looking at a weekend of temperatures reaching 37.78° C. I am concerned about the flowering plants I just put in the ground last weekend, all of which like shade and moderate temperatures. Have a lovely, drier, weekend, Leslie
You are an inspiration!
I love your arrangements. Your arrangements are floral therapy.
California could use your excess of rain. It has missed us and has gone to Texas.
Have a good weekend.
What a lovely article-as always! I live vicariously through your photos, although do have 5 lovely peony bushes, all but one sweetly fragrant. I look forward to the rest of your story lundi!
I too am in rain drenched Central Texas where the only flowers braving the deluge on our land are Hydrangea, Echinacea, and a few forlorn Day Lilies! We’re thankful for any of them at the moment. We lost a fully loaded peach tree last week. It broke just above ground level, but I was able to rescue about 4 dozen almost ripe Elbertas from the mud! Our Black Berries are really taking a beating! Your photos are lovely, as usual, Sharon…thank you! I hope the rains abate a bit for all of us!
It has rained all week here in Texas as well. The flowers are just beautiful. Thanks for sharing them. They sure do perk you up.
Thank you Sharon for sharing your beautiful flowers. It’s a very VERY wet day here on Queensland’s Gold Coast , so everything in my garden is completely sodden Your flowers have cheered up the morning. . Thank you
melt the polar ice =lots and lots of precipitation…rain, hail, snow etc. but no worry global warming is a hoax.
Such gorgeous flowers! I need to go out and cut hydrangeas due to drought. Here in NE Georgia we would gladly take some of that rain from you and from Texas! Anyway … your flowers uare magnificent!!!
I can actually smell the roses!
Sharon.your flower arrangements are always beautiful. Hope the weather picks up for you soon. It is also raining heavily here in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, we are not unhappy as it had been very dry.
Thank you Sharon, for sharing such beauty! Here at the other end of the world in Brisbane Australia, we also are having a deluge of rain this weekend. Hopefully our gardens will be blooming when the sun comes out in a couple of days.
So lovely! Hope all dries up soon!
Very wet here in Brisbane too. Have seen the rain and flooding in France on the news media…hope it’s well away by the time we hit town next month! Very pretty post..thank you
Regards Eleanor
Such a beautiful scene you paint for us in spite of all of the rain. Thank you!
So lovely! Thank you Sharon for the beauty that bring to us.
Rainy day in Sydney town,your flower arrangements lift the dampened spirits ,thank you Sharon. Hopefully the Louvre has gone into a state of alert & all is placed out of danger .So different from the heat of last summer in France. More extreme weather to be expected?!
Your arrangement is beautiful! The colors shout JOY! Thank you for sharing!
We are soaked here in North Texas. The Brazos has broken its banks, too.
Oh so gorgeous! Dry dry dry in SoCal.
Sharon, is your cerinthus. The same plant called Pride of Gibraltar? I have raised some of those from seed this year and am anxiously awaiting. It is very wet here in KY too-and so humid. My peonies are all gone and now I have oak leaf hydrangea, clematis, kniphopia, and late iris blooming. I enjoy your photos so much!
OMG Sharon…..after 3 years of drought, South Texas is floating away….many deer, cattle, horses, etc are in deep trouble. I can’t imagine the suffering of so many humans and animals alike. Pray for us all. France and Texas both.
Seems the weather is being difficult all over the world, makes me wonder why.
We’ve had unusual Spring, hot/sunny weather finally arrived couple days ago. Was rainy, cold, windy here for much too long but many areas had similar weather so not complaining. We’ve lived in several climates all over U.S. so pretty much take weather as it comes, just live with it as we need to. the warmer weather is nice as then hubs is outside working on yards and I have little peace.
So sorry about your breath takingly gorgeous flowers, good idea to enjoy them while you can in your home. Hope it will dry out there. The containers you made arrangements in are so pretty. Always happy to see your posts, have wonderful weekend.
Sharon, it’s Friday, June 3, here in Connecticut. The weather had been lovely all this week: Flowers in my garden beginning to bloom, including roses, peonies, iris and oriental poppies…then the rain came today. It seems to me that hardly a June passes without rain to knock about my peonies and poppies; sometimes reducing my iris pods to saturated brown masses of yuck before they even pop if the rain lingers for too long.
It has been such a tough year for the garden so far, but at least we have not had the floods here in the South West. Your arrangements always inspire me to do more than just put some roses in a vase, I have to be more inventive! We haven’t had the rain, in fact no rain since Monday, a miracle considering the dire forecast, but we haven’t had sun either, just grey skies and cool temperatures. Nothing is growing except the weeds and the grass. The locals are all complaining, the vegetables are way behind. But there’s nothing to do except do as you suggest and bring the flowers inside. Have a lovely weekend, Susan x
Beautiful flowers, Sharon. Here in the NW of England we have for once had better weather than in the south of our country. We are grateful after the horrendous flooding in December. Many people are still not back in their homes. My roses are still in bud but I look forward to the beautiful blooms. The azaleas and rhododendrons are stunning this year in all the gardens. Mine is small but I have squeezed in a couple of small ones.
I was wondering about you and your wonderful property… as always you make the best of it …
we have the same problem here , just when the roses start to unfold !!
So beautiful! I am in Le Morvan, in the heart of Burgundy. We are on flood alert but surrounded by gorgeous green and lush countryside thanks to all the rain. Bon weekend!
You did better than me…. I only took my secateurs to the garden 2 days ago and the ‘millefolia’ roses I picked for saving are looking so desperate in the 3 vases I’ve put them in that during breakfast I said ‘They make me tooooooo sad, they must go’…. I cut off dozens of sodden blooms, foul from relentless rain and collected them (in the rain)…. Sad indeed; but yet I’m so thankful that we could, so far, stay dry inside! After all, we’re talking flowers not lifes.
Wishing you a warm and sunny (at least in the heart) weekend.
PS: I’ve hundreds of marguerites who – in this rain – make stems 1.20m long…. they cover the footpaths in every direction because their heads are far too heavy – and they are thriving!
Gorgeous! I keep watch water climb up the Pont de l’Alma Zouave and sending dry thoughts your way.
Winter has arrived with a passion here in Christchurch NZ. Your garden must look a picture and smell divine!! Greta photos to cheer up a frosty night! Thank you
BEAUTIFUL! Looking forward to your book signing here in Tallahassee and Thomasville. Safe traveling.
Beautiful. So dry in So Cal, we need your rain.
Oh dear Sharon,
It is so hot in Arizona we have had a heat related weather warning. Today is the third day of it. 116-118 F today! We have broken records for three days. I planted a $100. worth of climbing roses this year and now they are all burned up. I mulched them and watered twice a day and they still died.
I am not even cooking in the house as I have spent a lot of money cooling off the house with air conditioning so I don’t want to heat it up with cooking. Although a salad and something cold to drink sounds better when your hot anyway.
It is so nice to see your bouquets it makes me feel cooler just to look at them. I understand the extreme of any weather can be catastrophic. Pray for us all around the world. I am looking at an old picture ( 1987 ) of my husband standing on the cobblestone walk way down by the Seine river looking over to the Notra Dame just as the sun is setting and the sandstone of the buildings appeare as gold. I love that picture, but as I saw on the news that area is all under water now. I hope the power of the water doesn’t undermine all of the stone work. That would cost millions of euro’s to rebuild. Stay dry and warm and we will stay hydrated and if all goes well maybe things will moderate and we will be back to life as usual soon.
Got to go back and get in the pool now. It is the only way to survive outside here this week. OXOX
So very beautiful! Thanks for sharing!
Your flowers are so beautifully designed Sharon. I hate to cut my peonies and roses as they last so much longer in the garden! So we are sitting outside today. We are having a hot spell for a few days after a number of cold windy days here on Vancouver Island, Canada. We have had a lack of water which challenges us to keep gardens alive.
Your posts are always delightful to read as well as beautiful to look at. Thank you for sharing!
We have had rain for almost two weeks in North Carolina. My flowers are sodden. I am cutting roses as fast as I can. This follows a cool and rainy spring. In April, temperatures plunged to 27 degrees just as the azaleas bloomed, destroying most of the flowers. I now notice that the crape myrtle has fewer buds than usual and I wonder if they were killed off along with the azaleas. Sharon’s bouquets lift the spirits when it’s gray outside.
Such beautiful flowers artfully displayed! I wish I had your talent for arranging flowers. My peonies are blooming beautifully this year. I finally overcame my reluctance to cut them and snipped off every bloom before the deluge of rain (much welcomed!) happened yesterday. The bouquet has filled my office with a heavenly scent! I’m looking forward to this Monday’s installment of your D-Day commemoration tale
I have just received your book and am loving it. I am restricting my reading to one chapter a day, so I don’t finish it too soon, but am flicking through the pictures every day!
Your pictures blogwise and bookwise are lovely.
Your flowers always look charming; rain or no rain……
I thought we would have the ‘rest of your story today’……
Hope it is there tomorrow…….
We’re lucky in Dallas, TX area, peonies bloom here in mid to late April. Mine were lovely, yours are stunning. Gorgeous arangements!