The Ironing is Done

11.15 pm and I have just finished the ironing! The table clothes for the stand needed a once over to get the bad wrinkles out, so that our tables look nice and neat when we finish putting the stand together tomorrow.

We have the car packed, nasturtium plants, sunflowers and a couple of others. Tables, more leaflets and thousands of nasturtium seeds. So it time for bed, we will be up at 5 am tomorrow so that we can hit the road early. All the stands have to be ready by 3 pm tomorrow afternoon, when the judges do their walk about.

It is getting close, we are looking forward to it, we hope lots of people will bring a paper pot with a sown seed home from Bloom.

Photos below: my iron and the floral pavilion at Bloom on Monday afternoon.

Bloom set up

We drove to Dublin this afternoon and brought a car load of leaflets, newspapers and tables for the stand. We also had time to cover the grass with mypex.

There was lots of activity in the floral
pavilion, including the Thompson & Morgan people putting together their amazing display of vegetables. Billy Alexander was also hard at work on his Dicksonia Direct stand and the florists were beavering away too. The pavilion will look amazing on Thursday!

Nastrurtiums from the nursery

Saturday afternoon, typical west of Ireland weather, a soft rain is blown by a westerly wind and grey clouds slide over the sky. We were in Dunleavy’s nursey just off the Loughglin to Ballinlough road in Co. Roscommon. Excitedly we were greeted by their grandchild, a little doll named Kila who informed her grandmother and aunt that there were customers here. Her aunty Valerie laughed as she said to Kila, “customers! Sure that word is bigger than youself”.

Two benches of nasturtiums grown in pots were laid out before us, we picked a good number for our Bloom stand. Each one beautifully healthy, grown with love. We picked up a couple more sunflower plants and Hanna found a double flowered pale pink and white aquilegia for our garden.

We packed them into the car, chatted with the Dunleavy’s until Kila came along covered in ice cream, she had started eating her cornetto from the narrow bottom end. We said our goodbyes and left Kila to be fussed over by two generations of Dunleavys. Off home to continue our preparations for Bloom, only four more days to go.

Sun flowers from local market

I bought a few sunflower plants for our BLOOM stand this morning. I was actually on my way to buy some bags of farm yard manure in the local Connacht Gold co-op when the sunny bright faces of the sunflowers caught my eye. They were standing by the side of the road in Ballaghaderreen in the misty rain. They looked like they were hitching a lift.

The sunflowers were being sold by a local nursery at the farmers market. I thought they would be perfect for our Project Nasturuim stand, and it is good to support local business. Later this evening Hanna and I will visit their nursery to select some flowering plants of nasturtiums.

Project Nasturtium Bloom 2010

Project Nasturtium
We enjoyed it so much last year we decided it to do it again! Thousands of visitors to Bloom meant to make a newspaper pot using an old smoothies bottle, and then sowed a nasturtium seed and brought it home.

Once again our main sponsors are Enrich and Sutton’s Seeds.

This year we have not only nasturtium seeds but sun flowers and coriander too, which will be sown in peat free organic compost.

Bloom 2010 starts on Thursday 3rd of June and runs every day until Monday 7th of June. If you are visiting Bloom make sure to drop by and sow some seeds.