I’m blue today (despite it being Eurovision tonight) you see I forgot the birthdays of two important folks – well, one of them, if it’d been a weekday, would have been alright because I remembered this afternoon that it’s my sis’s birthday tomorrow and therefore it was my nephew’s birthday on Friday. So now I must eat humble pie with my rellies.....again!

So, hence the blue(ish) image.

I’m fascinated by the way bluebells behave when they’re brought inside in a vase. They really get down to the desperate business of making seed quickly, much more so than the ones that have been left in the garden. Our garden is completely chock full of them, which is a great joy to me and a great sight to behold as under every tree and shrub there is a gorgeous blue carpet.

The bunch that this one is from was picked about three weeks ago and there are several big fat seed-heads on the now dead flowers. The ones in the garden are showing no sign of setting seed at the moment and possibly won’t. The pot containing these dead ones has been sat on the table in the kitchen since we had to dismantle the sitting room last week so the plasterers could start work.

I say ‘pot’ – the truth is it’s a vase with an almighty bite out of one side, where I was shoving it under the tap recently, full of flowers and foliage and I knocked the rim against the tap, breaking off a huge chunk. As I only own one vase of ‘sensible’ proportions, in other words, that you don’t have to fill with half of a field from Holland’s worth of flowers, I have to use the broken one or not bring flowers in from the garden.

While the vase has been there, I decided they needed the same treatment that I gave to the beech shoots a few weeks ago, on my 1500th day so that’s what this is all about. They have, of course, been shot straight into the light box, which is what gives them this skeletal look.

Last year was a grey day! Interestingly, last year a few days later, I'd just brought in my first bluebells of the year so it just goes to show how far we are ahead this year, they're definitely close to the end in the garden this year already!