Mulberry Lunch Flowers

Since the arrival of the newest Cublet, I've been properly hibernating.  Living life slightly a la Waynetta Slob.  I've spent two months in pyjamas.   Night and day.  Maybe a tracksuit bottom for a good day/special occasion. I've had Nashville on on a loop, pesto pasta for every meal  and all forms of self-beautification felt like a far and distant memory.  I cannot remember the last time my legs saw a moisturiser.  Or I saw them for that matter.  Poor Chaz.  

But last week I ran out of Nashville episodes, the sun put his hat on and I did start to feel slightly more human again.  I got back in my jeans, did the school run with all three and even put on mascara.

  

And then I went back to work.  My first job, post baby -  flowers for a spring lunch in London at the Mulberry showroom.  The brief was to create a relaxed yet wild feel with green and white flowers and all in takeable-home vases.  So I did a mix of white potted muscari in ribbed, chunky glass jars and Kilner jars bursting with ammi, ranunculas, anemones, blossom and lilac.

Even if I say so myself, they did look pretty special.  Perfect for a spring time wedding in case anyone reading is thinking about that...

www.willowcrossley.com

Poppy Fields

Two separate friends called me up the other day to tell me about these 'incredible fields full of poppies' that I had to go and see. We're not talking about the wafer thin red ones that line the roadsides but full on, real, spiky stemmed, buy-in-a-flower-shop type, lilac ones.  Driving the cubs to school yesterday morning I nearly drove into a tree when I looked up to see it was snowing in the fields to my left.  And then I remembered the Poppy story.  

So with no Cubs in tow, left to my own Cluedo-esq devices I went to track them down.  It didn't take a lot of detective work and two minutes later I'd found a gap in the fence and was waist deep in more poppies than I've ever seen in my life.  

It sadly turns out that it's actually a massive crop of morphine poppies - Papaver Somniferum - and not a ginormous pick your own poppy field.  Morphine's usually imported from Turkey, Tasmania and Spain but as a way of cutting costs and dealing with our growing demand for it, pharmaceutical companies are now paying UK farmers to grow it for them here. 

Now I know that they're owned by big old pharmaceutical companies the idea of slipping in with my secateurs makes me feel slightly uneasy.  I'm thinking moonlight stroll/ balaclava / camo gear might be the only way of getting my hands on a nice big bunch.