an ode to the departing summer.

earlier this year when i was going through a bit of a rough time, my mum sent me some flowers all the way from australia. i've no idea what florist they come from, but they were gorgeous; pink and bright and beautifully scented, and as a bonus still, they came in their own pink glass vase. i took delivery of them at work, and it was such a pretty bouquet, and seeing as i spend so much of my time at work and not a lot of my time at home, i decided to keep them there on my desk, and there is where they stayed. 

for days they remained alive, fresh scented and still gorgeous. weeks later, they'd become a little... sad looking, really, and weeks after that still, an experiment had begun; i wondered how long it would take anyone to notice the bouquet of dying flowers on my desk/to ask me to throw them away/ to throw them away themselves, or better still, to simply turn to pot pouri on my desk. or dust, as my colleagues predicted.

this was back in april, and that bouquet remained in that pink glass vase until just last friday, when appleyard london made me the luckiest girl in the whole of the regent's park by refreshing them by arranging a gorgeous flower delivery to my office.

my initial thoughts of the gorgeous 'sundae bouquet' from the florist's summer collection of next day flowers was that it was ~so bright and colourful that it instantly brought a stupid smile to my face. as if having fresh baked-goods and a beer trolley on hand on friday afternoon wasn't awesome enough, having this incredibly-scented bouquet sat on my desk certainly gave my afternoon the lift it definitely wasn't in any way in need of.

with the light dipping earlier in the day now and the mornings bringing an unwanted chill, this lush bouquet has certainly helped to prolong the sunshine in my work life, for the time being anyway. and, can we all just take a moment to appreciate the fact that this bouquet is pretty much the living embodiment of my blog header? bonus points to appleyard london for taking inspiration from their surrounds!

it's now five days on, and the blooms are still as fresh as when i first received them. they'd drank a lot of water over the weekend so they needed a big old top up on monday morning, but they are pretty damn resilient. considering they're sat under bright halogen lights all day long, and subjected to awful office air conditioning beyond my control, the pretty buds have barely discoloured or faded, or dried up in the slightest. if anything, more of the buds have opened up since the delivery, which i was definitely not expecting.

i've had so many compliments on the bouquet since they arrived, and i can't wait to watch them slowly die like the last ones did. sounds creepy huh, but actually the smell of the flowers changes so much as the leaves and petals dry out, and they really still do carry a heavy scent on them long after they're dead - as long as you let them go dry and not mouldy, that is!

if you'd like to send flowers of your own, then the kind folks at appleyard have generously offered a 33% off discount code for you to use on the whole range (excluding the next day variety); type BLOG33 in at checkout and take advantage of their amazing generosity.

thanks again to appleyard for the wonderful addition to my desk!

which is your favourite bouquet in the appleyard range?