colour frenzy

After a week with so many grey skies, and reminded of Frida Kahlo and things Mexican here, I decided the only way to get some colour into my week was to do it myself. With some flowers for a start.

Allotments are awash with dahlias this time of year. When I first found out that dahlias were the national flower of Mexico, I was a little surprised because they seem so quintessentially English though now I think of it, maybe they are more about what we would like to be like -more colourful, unrestrained, a little blowsy. These particularly fabulous ones grow on a plot a few yards down from mine.

And this beauty too.

My dahlias are not ready yet and even when they do flower they are unlikely to match the colour of these. I had to sate my appetite by buying flowers instead.


If I was really brave, I'd be wearing these in my hair, Frida style, but something tells me that I might not get away with it at my age, so I had to make do with my new orange patent pumps and a favourite skirt, a few years old now but destined to last forever, at least in my heart. I'm not the only one to feel like this about my clothes. I re-discovered Justine Picardie's "My Mother's Wedding Dress" this evening, an unexpectedly delicious book that describes the memories created by clothes. As she says, "life is not a bowl of cherries, but there is sometimes pleasure to be had in cherry red shoes".

And shoes the colour of tangerines.

PS We'll examine shocking pink another day...