July, ramblings.

Here are some photos of our garden in July. July, which has been and gone. Everything has changed faster than I can keep track of. We have lived here for over nine months now. I keep telling people we have just moved to London, but we haven't, it's been almost a year.

My kids are nearly three. That's three years. Three years old. It's really time to start actually parenting them, not just making sure that they don't kill themselves or each other. We should probably teach them to use the toilet and sleep in proper beds, but lord I'm tired. Yesterday Nye went mountain biking all day (he's better by the way) and left me at home with the girls. It was the first time in as long as I can remember that I enjoyed being alone with them all day. Individually they're great, but together they fight and whine and moan and cry and steal each others' shit and it drives me completely nuts. I shout at them 'WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE NICE TO EACH OTHER FOR FIVE MINUTES?' and they look at me like I'm stupid. They have a point.

Somehow it's over half way through the year but we've only photographed seven of this year's twenty weddings. To my surprise, most of those weddings are in and around London. It's pretty cool.

On Wednesday Nye and I are going to France, by ourselves. We'll be away for five days. I'm photographing a party one of those days, and we'll spend two of them travelling, but the other two are all ours, all alone in France. It will be our fifth wedding anniversary while we're there. Some of you started reading this blog more than five years ago. Hi. And thank you. It blows my mind that you keep coming back, despite the fact that for the last three years I've mostly been writing 'I don't know what to write.'

A few months ago I started writing properly. I got up every morning before anyone else was awake and I sat at the computer and wrote Shit I Can Remember for an hour. Then W&P would wake up and I would spend another hour drowning out their hysterical yelling with white noise through my headphones. I did this every day for a month. I wrote 28,000 words. Then I stopped. For a long time my heart was too sore. Today I woke up at 6.30am and started again. Who knows if it will stick this time.

Over the last three months I've photographed nine families in and around London. To my surprise, I love it. I think maybe this is what I want to do when I grow up. I've also started building another website, with my personal work. I really want to get more into lifestyle photography, photographing people and places and spaces and things. I kind of want to show you it but I've kind of called the business my real name, and I'm not sure I'm ready to share that. For now it's okay because I have no idea how to get any work photographing people and places and spaces and things. Does anyone from Country Living read my blog? Would you like to hire me please?

The Floral Coalition

I know these two really amazing women, who just happen to be two really amazing florists; Lotte, of Lotte and Bloom in Glasgow and Miss Pickering of Miss Pickering (rumour has it she has a first name, but I could neither confirm nor deny such gossip) in Lincolnshire. And they just happen to know each other and well, they got together to form The Floral Coalition and to host a class at Miss P's shop in the Shires. 

When I heard that they were hosting a class I immediately knew I wanted to go, partly because I like flowers but mostly because Lotte and Miss P make me laugh. In the midst of deliberating over whether or not I could afford to pay them to make me laugh I remembered something brilliant; I can take photos. And they might need photos. I could probably get in on this action without paying anything at all. And so I offered to photograph their Flower School in exchange for lunch and the time of day from The Hound. 

They took me up on my offer and so on Monday I spent the day in Stamford, photographing The Masters impart their wisdom. It was a lovely way to spend a day, a brief lull in the sadness and noise of life. Miss P's shop is a cool, dark, quiet cave. Scented with masses of roses and peonies (natch), it's easy on all of the senses. And yes, Miss P and Lotte made me laugh. Which was nice. The Hound wasn't exactly generous with his affections but he let me pat him on the head, which I'll take. 

It was really amazing to watch these ladies work. They are both absolute artists so it was like magic seeing them weave flowers effortlessly into bouquets and arrangements and buttonholes while simultaneously chatting about methods and making cups of tea and fielding customers and giving the dog a pigs' ear, all while retaining a mysterious air of calm. Then the students were set free in a shop filled to bursting with the most beautiful flowers imaginable to create their own arrangements. There was also tea, coffee, diet coke and biscuits on tap; florist fuel. I loved it. 

If you're interested in learning more about floristry I can't recommend their next class (date tbc) highly enough. Sign up for the mailing list here. Probably best to get in there while they're still charging pennies, before they realise how stupidly good at this they are. 

Aside; I'm hoping to branch out into more lifestyle-ish photography, artists and craftsmen and designers at work. So let me know if you know anyone who is after that (this) sort of thing. Ideally I'd like to aim towards getting paid in real money for my work, but I'm also fond of biscuits and a nice red wine. 

Flower Floret Farm

Do you know Flower Floret Farm? If not, you probably need them in your life (or their blog, at least). They're an organic flower farm north of Seattle and their life makes my heart ache for a world of sunsets and dahlias and wheelbarrows of soil and baby chickens at my feet and fairies in the foxgloves (because I'm sure that's exactly what running a flower farm is like. All of the time.)  While the chances of me running away to start a flower farm are slim, I am all kinds of excited about the beautiful things we will grow in our garden, if we ever find it.

images by Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower Farms