we are family

August and summer at its best with family!

Greek family dinner with Henk's brothers and their girls with lots of fun and old memories on Saturday evening.

Furthermore, this week my niece Afra from London came to stay with her family. We had such a lovely summer family day together with my sister's fabulous family. Lots of precious moments, fun, playing, laughing and dining in the backyard.

Hurray for August so far!

dahlia festival

Flowerday at work in August, the middle of the dahlia season.

vase d'août

Vase d'avril août

Playing with flowers, half from the florist and the other half from our garden.

faded flowers

Zinnias in the garden, in the vase and for the future.

The more flowers you pick, the more you stimulate flowering. In the vase, put your zinnias preferably on a small layer of water.

Remove overblown flowers as soon as possible, therefor all energy goes to new flowers, and you have constant bloom.

However, if you want to harvest seeds to sow next year, you need to wait until the flowers finish blooming and allow the seeds to ripen. Just make sure to harvest the zinnia seeds after a few sunny days, whereby the seed heads are dry and not soaking wet.

Don't sow zinnias in the same place two years in a row.

I put these faded zinnias in a vase, and will let them dry and keep the seeds for next year. ... and I also like faded flowers.

splendid zinnias

Look at the splendid color combination of pale orange and lilac. This stunning zinnia is by far my favorite summer flower of the season.

It's the Zinnia elegans Forecast, a mixture of single and double flowers in all kind of exotic colors of purple, pink, lilac, orange, salmon, yellow and vanilla shades.

A few days after picking, the colors fade a bit and the zinnias are even more spectacular.

These ones are growing in the Villa Augustus garden. Note to self; I will definitely sow the seeds in my own garden next year.

cigale collection

The cigale collection with flowers from the backyard.

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.

summer flowers

Summer flowers from the garden.

summer flowers

Sunday morning - 29th of July - backyard

Enjoy your Sunday!

A mini summer bouquet on the garden table.

It's in the little things.

summertime, and the livin' is easy

Summertime, and the livin' is easy...