Daffodils

We have daffodils indoors this week.

It's time to think of spring!

Kate  x

Summer roses and milk glass

It has been a wet start to summer, but the first of the roses still manage to look and smell divine! 

I snipped these beautiful old roses from my Dad's garden over the weekend, and I carefully nursed them in a mug of water on my lap on the drive back to the city. The lengths I go to...

Each variety has a subtly unique fragrance. The smaller milk glass vase is on my bedside table, and is a soothing sight and scent to open my eyes to in the morning. 

The large blush flower I believe is 'Albertine', an old variety raised by Barbier. Dark salmon coloured buds open out to large blush pink blooms, and occasionally a pale apricot bloom will appear. It is a rambling rose producing many flower heads. 

The small white rose in the foreground (above) is either 'Albatross' or 'Kiftsgate'. It is a prolific flowerer, smothering its branches in small, delicate, single-layered white blooms.

As usual with mother nature, photographs don't do these roses justice.

I have also brought back with me a large armful of mint, rosemary, lemon balm, sage, marjoram and thyme. And stalks of silver beet and rhubarb. Dad's place is better than a farmers market.

Kate  x

Styling and Photographs by M o s s & V i n e

Can't bake a cake without breaking eggs

The weather outside is miserable. My cake baking hankerings are at fever pitch. But there is one particular recipe I am keen to try, and wouldn't you know it, I'm an ingredient short. I could don my rubber boots, a warm coat, and venture to the shops, but I'm a resident of Sydney, and everybody knows that Sydney-siders can't function in the rain. Why? I'm not sure. It's just an accepted truth. You will never encounter another major city coming to near-standstill just because a few drops of water fall from the sky.

As soon as the heavens begin cooperating with my food cravings, I'll be making this MILK AND CITRUS CAKE. Imen's blog FARMETTE is one of my absolute favourite food and lifestyle blogs. I cannot wait for her cook book to be available in Australia. It is sure to be filled with extraordinarily stunning food styling and photographs of the Irish countryside. In the meantime if you're hungry (pun) for more of this hearty, farm-kitchen style cookery and exquisite images, follow Imen's blog and INSTAGRAM feed.

I am also keen to try THIS just as soon as I can get my hands on some lavender free from nasty pesticides. Again, wishing I could time travel back to my OLD HOME to savour a backyard acreage of flowering rows of lavender.

And this heavenly looking LILAC PAVLOVA recipe will be attempted just as soon as the summer lilacs start to bloom. G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S!

Kate  x

Cake, styling and photograph by Moss & Vine

Cake originally appeared in THIS blog post.

In praise of simple pleasures

It might be the cold weather, the shorter days, or the inevitable mid-year slump, but we find ourselves indulging our desires more and more at the moment, and damn the calories consequences. Before I share what we are loving (and slathering in double cream) in our nest right now, let me just also note that we imposed a little dry period for the first few weeks of June. I am alcohol-free most of the time anyway, however Alex tumbled from the wagon when he had a beer with a seafood platter lunch. In his defence it was the long weekend, and the sun was shining. And we were next to the water, looking at pretty sail boats and a frolicking seal. But not all of our weaknesses come attached to excess calories. Mine are usually floral related. Or found in vintage and thrift shops.

I am taking full advantage of the early spring flowers that are available right now. I bought a bunch of poppies to give to my Mum on the long weekend. Then I snuck out to the camelia bush in my Nan's backyard to pick this pink beauty. It has resulted in a new appreciation for these wonderful and DIVERSE FLOWERS. If only they in turn appreciated being cut and put into a vase. Camelia is used almost exclusively for its leaves in floristry. The flowers have little commercial value as they die quickly. 

We've been eating SCONES too. Quite a few scones actually. Two batches and counting. The food related indulgences have me most worried, because it's not limited to scones, jam and cream. There is also an increase in the amount of crusty white bread being eaten. Melting moments, FUDGE, chocolate brownies and copious amounts of french onion dip have also made appearances. 

The up-swing of scones is the chance to indulge my current obsession with silver spoons. Jam spoons, teaspoons, mustard spoons. I want them all. My preoccupation with CUTLERY is unshakeable. I'm having a serious love affair with cutlery right now. HERE, HERE & HERE.

It is funny almost sad how excited I can get over a good INSTAGRAM hashtag these days. I think the lack of flower flinging in my day-to-day life recently has left a creative void that needs filling. I am attempting to self-teach better prop styling and photography. Instagram hashtag competitions are a wonderful prompt for this practice. I love the monthly #7VIGNETTES, and @ITS_MY_WEEK run a fantastic weekly competition with a new theme each Monday. But given my adoration of vintage cutlery, I participated in #THESPOONSERIES tag with much enthusiasm. My entries? HERE, HERE and HERE.

Other tags I recommend exploring?

#MYMONTHOFSUNDAYS

#FRIDAYFAFFINGCOMPETITION

#SEEKTHESIMPLICITY

&

#PROPSTYLERS

The gym is calling me back.

Kate  x

Styling and photographs by Moss & Vine

Fudge (pictured) from TILBA TREASURES Ulladulla Aus

Links to love: June edition

This We Fell in Love FEATURED WEDDING is very lovely.

What can I say? THE CUTTING GARDEN.

THIS shop makes me want to up-sticks and move to Bath. Also, THIS does. And, AUSTEN does too, obviously.

Some garden envy happening HERE.

A link for the FUTURE. Where I will buy my old rose varieties for my dream garden.

I can't get enough of these CUTIES.

I'm pining for my very own KUMQUAT tree to cut branches from.

Some NAUTICAL NICENESS.

This is nothing short of exceptionally CUTE.

I know I say it every month, but how WONDERFUL to be a farmer florist.

Fellow flora enthusiasts rejoice, the beginning of winter means the sweetest smelling ERLICHEER is just around the corner.

Keep warm,

Kate  x

Flowers, Styling and Photograph by Moss & Vine 

Science

Get a clean beaker, 

pour in two parts H2O (also known as water for the laymen amongst us)

+

three parts pink bouvardia

=

Native to Mexico, bouvardia means enthusiasm // zest for life. 

Prettiest science experiment I ever conducted.

Kate  x

Flowers, Styling and Photographs by Moss & Vine

Mother

We inherit our genes, and other traits from our Mothers, but from mine I also inherited an appreciation for:

Books,

Flowers,

Collectables,

Blue & white.

Happy Mothers Day.

Kate  x

Photograph and Styling by Moss & Vine

A never-ending list

I know, I know, I already gave you the somewhat definitive list of my favourite flowers HERE, but it turns out there were some notable absences. Like I said, it's a difficult list to contain.

Lilac

Hellebores

Freesia

They all deserve a loud and enthusiastic shout-out. It is a constantly evolving list as I learn about new flowers, handle new blooms, and continue to peruse on-line wedding flower inspiration. My current favourite sources? WE FELL IN LOVE and THE KNOT. *Swoooon* worthy, indeed!

Today I came home with a much needed bunch of sweetness in the form of hyacinth. Sydney has been experiencing biblical amounts of rain recently. And the perfect antidote to that is the heavenly scented, cheerily pretty, spring hyacinth. So that's one more to add to my list of favourite flowers.

World Hyacinth Day is celebrated on March 7th, when hyacinths are blooming in abundance in the northern hemisphere. According to the Victorians, hyacinth means: constancy, sportiness, impetuousness, and "I am sorry". They truly smell uplifting. Better than any perfume you could buy.

Kate  x

Photograph and Styling by Moss & Vine

May?

It's May already. Really? I feel as though it was only last month that I was sat cross-legged on the lounge room floor wrapping Christmas gifts in brown paper. Now autumn is in full swing. Even with the startling amount of rain we've been enduring lately, I still love and embrace this season in all its glory. I adore autumn and the filtered sun that accompanies it. I love the crisp morning air, and the promise of snow soon to settle on the mountains back home.

I drove home to the mountains for a fleeting visit last weekend, hopeful that even with the approach of winter there would still be something interesting flowering in the garden that I could cut to bring back to brighten our little city flat. 

Sadly but not unexpectedly, anything that had flowered and flourished over the summer had retreated beneath the cooling ground in anticipation of early frosts. The vegetable patch was almost bare, save for the small clump of rhubarb that seems to defy all seasonal obstacles. Over the fence in an abandoned backyard, however, there was an ancient very old apple tree heavy with an abundance of blushing apples. For me, apples are synonymous with autumn. I didn't hesitate to take advantage. I returned to Sydney with a gluttony of refreshingly imperfect fruit, and little idea of how I am supposed to eat my way through them before they start to go bad. I've been eating them fresh for breakfast all week. And I keep meaning to stew some to have with porridge. But I also wanted to turn some of the apples into something slightly delectable and otherwise banned from our diet. Something naughty.

I carefully halved and cored a handful of them before baking them in the oven to eat with butterscotch sauce. I appropriated THIS recipe for butterscotch sauce. It's not the healthiest way to enjoy apples, but I don't regret it one bit. It is definitely a sometimes only food. Until next autumn...

Kate  x

Styling and Photographs by Moss & Vine

Bowerbird

I was in a city bar recently, two glasses deep into the house-white when someone amongst our party asked the group what they thought their spirit animal is. I had immediate flashbacks to an exceptionally awkward job interview where a similar out of the blue question was asked. 

Out of the blue. It's from the blue that my answer comes. I'm a bowerbird, fussing over my nest, filling it with beautiful objects (blue, and otherwise) that I've scavenged from just about everywhere. Yes, I relate to the bowerbird completely. The "otter" in the group replied, "that seems like a very florist answer".  Is it? I think I was a bowerbird loong before I was a florist. I'm less a florist, and more a nester, a home-body, a frustrated interior designer. I only believe in beautiful things.

This past year, I overhauled the cutlery drawer by purging it of all plastic. I replaced the ugly plastic divider with a nicer wooden version and put baskets either side. All plastic handled cutlery was thrown donated in favour of silver spoons, bone-handled knives, and wooden serving utensils. It was a total gentrification of the top kitchen drawer. My inspiration for this project was Catherine at In The Fields, previously A Country Farmhouse. The images from this post of her own kitchen drawer sparked in me a burning desire to cultivate my own rustic, beautifully mis-matched top drawer.

I'm not sure how many readers out there would get similarly excited over something as mundane and utilitarian as the cutlery drawer, but a true nester, a fellow bowerbird would understand irrevocably. Catherine is my style idol. The queen of collectables. And a fellow flower enthusiast. To say that I am a big admirer is falling short of the mark. Catherine and her husband are currently undergoing a second home restoration. Their first home featured on her A Country Farmhouse blog was something dreams are made of. Impossibly impeccable.

I try to hold most other aspects of our own nest to a similarly rigorous aesthetic standard. It is not always an easy task, because the man in my our home doesn't recognise why the sheets and covers on the bed need to match, or why I need to buy another lamp, and trying to convince him of the beauty of coloured depression glass will be eternally futile. In his defence though, he thinks nothing of my buying yet another wicker basket, is in full-support of my quest for the perfect wing-back arm chair in which to read, and has readily accepted that the entire contents of our recently gentrified drawer require hand-washing and can never under any circumstances be put through the dishwasher. He's easily trained. I think i'll keep him.

Kate  x

Styling and Photographs by Moss & Vine

Bottoms up!

We are officially back in the "big smoke".

Our little (temporary) apartment has little more than a few white goods and a bed at the moment, but we are once again Sydney-siders.

I've been slow to dive back into the rush of city living, I dipped a proverbial toe in the waters first.

But, I'll admit to be being a little excited to experience some new aspects of Sydney living.

Cheers!


Kate  x


Styling and Photograph by Moss & Vine