Sun Bleached Prettiness

These weeks of endless sunshine have had the interesting effect of bleaching the flowers of some of our longer flowering varieties, such as yarrow and larkspur.  The peach variety of yarrow, which usually fades with time to a soft apricot, has this year turned a very pale parchment colour, almost cream.  As cream is perhaps the most asked for colour amongst our customers, we are delighted.  Most of the larkspur has been picked now, but the papery towers of 'mystery lavender' are still blooming, their petals a little faded by the heat to a soft smoky shade.  All these delicate colours work well with the richer chocolate-plums of the wild carrot and the chocolate cosmos, and the dreamy mauves of the verbena bonariensis.  The verbena is one of the flowers we grow which really adores this heat; another is the zinnia.  I'm saving zinnias for another week, but we have never before had such huge and perfect flowers, of such brilliantly intense colour.