dahlias

The dahlia comes originally from Mexico and is named after Swedish botanist Andreas Dahl. It is the national flower of Mexico and was originally used by the Aztecs as a food plant.

Once the dahlias were spread around the world, they became much loved for their beautiful vivid flowers, but I still use the petals to cheer up the salad.

faded flowers

The last garden flowers of the year, which are already faded but still pretty.

This field bouquet with nigella damascene, corn flowers and coriander flowers, I picked last week from the Villa Augustus garden. And hey, 2018 has been a lush floral year! I can not remember a year, the flowers in the garden bloomed so abundantly and flowering lasted until mid-November.

From now on we get the flowers from the auction.

I'm not only fond of flowers, I also love vases, as you may have noticed.

The painted vintage flower vase is also from Villa Augustus. I bought it in the market shop where I work 3 days a week. It's always hard to resist special items like these. I've set myself a rule, that I can never buy something impulsively. I have to wait at least one week, until I proceed to a purchase. Simply because you don't have to buy everything you like right?... And often the need is much less after a week, I know from experience. It is a great rule if you work in a nice shop like the Villa Augustus market shop, where almost daily beautiful new stuff comes in.

This unique vintage vase stared at me, and even now I kept to the 'wait a week' rule...

Well I cheated a little bit, because I put a 'reserved' sticker on it.

So the painted vase has found it's place in my new studio (under construction) and I love it, even without flowers in it, still beautiful.