somewhere over the rainbow…

today was fun!… out and about in sussex sharing flower stories over the bank holiday weekend an occurring theme arose quite by accident… that being… how do you remember the colours of the rainbow! we thought that there was only one rhyme, the old favourite that we were taught at school Richard (red) Of (orange) York (yellow) Gave (green) Battle (blue) In (indigo) Vain (violet) but we were stopped in our tracks because apparently remembering the colours can also be done by using a mans name… a mister ROY G BIV so for some time we argued over the merits of each one until at the eleventh hour a lovely teacher told us we were all wrong because the rhyme was actually Richard Of York Got Bathed In Vinegar which led us to wonder which was actually the most historically correct as surely that should be the deciding factor in the best way to remember the colours of the rainbow… how do you remember the colours of the rainbow?… do comment and let us know!

because we can…. follow us over the rainbow and see how our flowers are made!

don’t forget these wise words when travelling….
rainbow in the morning: travellers take warning.
rainbow at night: travellers’ delight.

and remember the words of lord byron “be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. the evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.”

adventure at the flower makers museum

if i had known it had existed and planned a visit i think it would have been just about as much fun but it didn’t happen like that at all…. it went something like this…. yesterday was a damp sunday afternoon and by the time i reached hastings, sussex it was dark as well i think it was about half past four… i hadn’t had any lunch so i thought as i was passing i’d stop at judges to get something to eat… which is exactly what i did! i love a good road trip but one littered with mini adventures is my particular favourite and well what an adventure… as ever attracted by flowers i had spotted what looked exactly like a florists so i thought to stretch my legs i would wonder down and have a look and on closer inspection it was a florists a proper real artificial florists so i had to go in… it may have been because it was dark outside but inside everything sparkled like an aladdin’s cave…. vintage velvets stacked high on shelves, row upon row of flowers… a kew gardens of artificial flowers i couldn’t resist i saw anemone’s… i looked around and there was no one there so very quickly i whipped a fuzzy flower out of my handbag and planted my shot!…
i thought that heaven must be quite similar as i turned to leave… which is when i tripped over this sign carefully place on the floor

this is how charlie must of felt when he opened his chocolate bar and found the golden ticket because if you ask me what i like most in the world i’d probably say flowers, making flowers or museums… as if piles of sparkling vintage velvet and hundreds of types of artificial flowers wasn’t enough … i picked up the sign and shouted ‘shop’
which is exactly when the queen of artificial flowers entered from the very back of the shop… all of a sudden i knew nothing about making artificial flowers… as i handed across my furry flowers and tried to explain how exciting the sign was.

after the inspection…. she said ‘fine quality stitching’ … (i was really proud coming from a lady who has been in the business many years it was a huge compliment) which she shortly followed with i’ll put the lights on downstairs if you’d like, yes please i said… then brenda, the queen of artificial flowers led me downstairs and told me how she had found and kept together the most incredible collection of the history of flower making over the last 150 years… i had thought it was just a sign!

breakfast, birds and blogs

after spotting our lovely flowers in newly opened Abundant Shop & Gallery ludlow’s premier destination for beautiful fresh and felt flowers, gifts, vintage glass and kitchenalia. karen from hopton house bed and breakfast decided to use our flowers to adorn the breakfast tables in her beautiful bed and breakfast… we liked this so much we stayed with karen when we went to visit phil and ott at abundant to deliver their christmas puddings and our visit went something like this… wow… wow… wow!
my room was absolutely huge… it was more of an entire suite really and it was immaculate and i think that karen has thought of everything in fact i think she has thought of things that i didn’t even know i needed… i think it must be hers years of experience in the tourism industry crossed with the fact she is just a really lovely person who loves sharing her home with passing friends!… i thought about making a list of all the great stuff i found but that would be like telling you the ending to a film so i opted for telling you about my top 3…. and this i hastened to add is in no particular order as i couldn’t decide!
1. in the fridge you will find not just still and sparkling water but also a hand labeled bottle of tap water… perfik!
2. a cake tin with delicious handmade cake in… check out karen’s blog for some of her amazing recipes
and finally
3. a decanter of sherry… just because….

in fact there is so much good stuff to say i’m not sure how i am going to fit it all in but.. the bed was so big i got lost and thats saying something, i ran out of fingers to count the pillows and the bathroom was also a wet room and had the most delicious handmade organic toiletries in that i had to take with me my bar of honey ginger and orange soap… i hope that’s not stealing!!! ;0)

i slept like a baby once i had managed to get over the excitement of meeting martyn and his crew at the jolly frog the food there alone was worth the drive… the menu looked so delicious i couldn’t choose so i left it in martyns capable hands and i was delighted… a perfect meal, great wine, good company….

then as if i hadn’t been spoilt enough already… i didn’t think it could get any better it was time for breakfast…
i started to wonder if there was anything karen couldn’t do in the kitchen as i browsed the menu… all homemade to order… poached fruit, smoothies, muffins, pancakes, fish, eggs in a million different ways or a full shropshire… as i sipped a hand pressed apple juice i wondered whether i could start at the top and work my way down… i did think about asking karen if she had any vacancies for that night… it would have been quite easy not to leave! well when i finally did make my mind up i can assure ou that i didn’t leave any waste on my plate!… which may me proud to think that our flowers that don’t create any waste in their manufacture were decorating the breakfast tables in Hopton House Bed and Breakfast….
wait i forgot to tell you the best bit… the view… the hundreds of birds in the garden… all the great stuff to do…
and you can even take your dog!

the original and the best

our puddings on the left are really cool… not just because they are made in the right way but because we designed them way back when in the middle of the desert in 52 degrees and explained to lots of muslims and hindus all about the history of the christmas pudding and about our big festival for the year…. in exchange we learnt lots about eid the big muslim festival for the year and diwali the big hindu festival for the year. we work together to make our products because we all benefit from them equally.

our christmas puddings are hand moulded from wool which takes about 20 minutes and although it looks quite easy its really hard work as quite a lot of pressure has to be applied. our chief ball moulder i call two balls because his party trick is making two balls at once, he has four children that all go to school. we make our christmas puddings like our flowers… by hand we do not use any electricity and we do not create any waste because we believe it is the right way to make things. we also don’t like to be greedy so everyone gets paid a fair price for what they do so that we can make sure that stuff made in the right way doesn’t have to cost lots more.
so why am i writing about it?
sometimes i get sad because we go to the trouble of making puddings in the right way as i have explained and then we find that our designs have been copied and produced in not quite the right way… and are selling online with postage for the same as ours…. heals… we are looking at you… please ask your suppliers how they produce their goods.

empty shops don’t have to be empty

we love shops… for lots of reasons. for decades theorists have likened shopping to religion and if we were to agree with them then i at least would throw my hands in the air fall to my knees and put on a habit… but its not that simple! our favourite kind of shops are the ones that are a little different, offer a service a specialist independent kind of shop.. the ones that give the high street character and a town its identity… the sort of shop in some places we are losing all too quickly. it doesn’t have to be all gloom and doom though because lots of great new stuff is happening but lack of communication and red tape is slowing the development of exciting new projects that could put some life and colour back into the neglected high streets.
we got so frustrated by it all we took carte blanche out and about…

dan thompson got so frustrated he started the emptyshops network and in partnership with worthing council staged the first empty shops conference… lots of people getting together to get things done… fabulous!

vanishing of the bees

we don’t want bee bumble just to be a drawing on our website so we take particular interest in how we can make sure this doesn’t happen and one of our favourite ways to this is to make sure we keep up with the latest from help save bees, they have a great website and they can also bee (opps!) followed on twitter which is where we found a competition last week to win tickets to go and see the new docufilm vanishing of the bees. we had to answer the question what do bees collect from flowers, we answered correctly nectar and pollen and were then very excited to receive an email a few days later to say that we had won tickets for our local cinema to see vanishing of the bees. the filmakers have tackled the unanswered problem of where are all the bees vanishing to…. because right now even the really clever bee people aren’t sure.
will vanishing of the bees go down in history of film for being great?… in all honesty probably not… but the occasional camera wobble, dodgy in places editing and in
we used a kenny g soundtrack so are in no position to comment on the soundtrack!! endeared us to the film and made us question the vanishing of the bees…
we are always fascinated about where stuff comes from because it is the reason we do what we do … but we do what we do because we do believe it is possible with a lot of hard work to do things in a good way. we were really shocked by some of the facts we picked up from the film for example… seeing a queen bee being artifically inseminated… shocked me and ive thought about this quite a bit and i think it was something to do with how tiny the bee was and how silly it looked it reminded me about just how stupid we are interfereing with nature in such a way… we should be living in harmony… should we not?
we also saw fantastic archive footage of scientists in the first world war developing ammunition to be used to spray towns to harm the people… it did not become operational until the second world war when they learnt that it was so successful at killing things they packaged it up in bags and called it pesticide… on of the major ingredients being nicotine… the stuff in cigarettes???…. the government in france have banned the use of this particular pesticide because it has been proven as harmful… would it not be so difficult for the rest of the world to follow their lead?…
and finally because we wouldn’t want to spoil it for you!… we didn’t realise quite how well travelled some of the american bees are… they travel hundreds and thousands of mile each year by road… these little guys with our help have found themselves some awfully big shoes and we know what big shoes leave… big footprints.
vanishing of the bees leaves us with lots of fabulous ideas about what we can do to start managing the situation here are just a few…

1. check out help save bees to find out all the latest information
2. plant bee friendly plants in your garden if you haven’t got a garden follow the lovely richard’s lead
3. when buying honey read the label always buy local honey
4. join the bumblebee conversation trust
5. learn to keep bees and have a hive in your garden

watch this space

preparations are well underway for our appearance on anthony gormley’s 4th plinth in trafalgar square … we know exactly what we are doing… so much so we will explain it in technicolour detail over the next few days here…. hopefully! *nerves*

well the day before yesterday we visited lots of our lovely friends and neighbours and asked them to turn out their cupboards and donate any old material to our fourth plinth appearance and as usual they came up trumps… we even managed to borrow a sewing machine after ours had gone on the blink! we set about a bit of pinking and created some strips of fabric that by sometime later today will become a grass like attraction that we can take onto the plinth… *fingers crossed*

after some frantic texting throughout the day after the lovely @oneoffstuff had said that we should get a microphone (we have still got to work out what we might say!) this weeks hero @martyngale rocked up in his old veg oil powered jeep to deliver a battery powered microphone.. he didn’t stay for tea because he was off to launch some rockets but he did promise he’d tell us all about it on tuesday!

still frantically rushing round trying to finish off… really don’t have a clue what to wear… will be back later!

well 12 meters of recycled grass later… i didn’t have time to finish sewing it all so it was infact entirely pinned together and i was petrified that it would all get tangled up and not unroll but it was too late to do anything else!!
i dyed the pink mermaid dress that the onion presented me with purple… in all the hurry i managed to catch it on the door handle so my lovely mum patched it for me at somewhere between 2 and 3 am on sunday morning!!

after about a whole hours sleep i left the house to pick up @oneoffstuff who came for yoga breathing and moral support which i am eternally grateful for! by the time we got to london i felt really quite sick… absolutely petrified and was ready not to go up but i knoew all my most favouritist people had ventured into london to see it live or through the wonders of the net were watching live from all over the world so in i went!

well the guys in the portacabin were absolutely lovely… really helpful getting a whole field of grass across trafalgar square wasn’t easy but everyone mucked in! I had to arrive an hour and a half before my time slot because there is masses to do when you get there… but the crew are old pros now!… as they have already seen 90% of the 2400 plinthees! I had to show photo id to prove who i was … check passed that one…. i then had to sign my life away well there were lots of forms… media release forms, check forms and health and safety forms and a questionaire. I then had 5 minutes to get changed before having to have my photo taken and be interviewed for the Wellcome
Trust who are documenting the project in a series of oral history interviews… fantastic great supporter of their work so chatted as usual for far too long which meant we had to do a quick dash across the square and onto the cherry picker!… everything was a bit out of sync because the square had been closed off for the diwali celebrations that we had organised especially… with the help of the mayor of london and a few others!
After a final security check for anything sharp… it was lucky the security guard said that i was allowed pins… i was slightly worried!! we set off across trafalgar square and into the cherry picker…
well one of the things i was really worried about was the height… heights are not my favourite things but on the way up i thought i’d better grab a photo for my collection and by the time i had done that i was up there bingo!

then i was on the plinth… finally….
i was still worried but had to get the grass out so that is what i did and luckily it didn’t get too tangled up… got the mic plugged in and then all i had to do was talk!… it made me far to nervous to think i was on the plinth in trafalgar square talking through a mic so after about 5 mins i thought i’d just pretend i was talking to my friends who i could see at the bottom… then i felt much happier and even started to enjoy it!!

my favourite bit was throwing lots of naked flowers off and watching people do silly things with them.. and starting to talk about where they had come from and how they were made… that made it all worthwhile!! i even managed to persuade a policeman with a flower to have his photograph taken for the collection!! have a watch here

my second favourite bit was walking through trafalgar square afterwards and looking up at the plinth to see that a couple of naked flowers had decided to stay up there!!

a huge thank you to everyone that helped and supported me with the plinth mission… i really hope you enjoyed it! and don’t forget you can now send someone you love a naked flower…. just choose the naked flower delivery option!

packaging experiment take #1

packaging does literally cost the earth… we are constantly trying to work out what packaging we should use but actually we just like naked flowers so that prompted us to question exactly how much packaging we need and what exactly do we need it for… so we teamed up with carla who also has a naughty mutt and decided to send her a flower with just an address label via royal mail to see what happens…

well the story continues in our local post office… a flower with no packaging caused much hilarity and debate… i wasn’t sure to begin with if i was going to be allowed to post it at all. I managed to persuade them to at least weigh it so that if I decided to send it anyway then at least it would have the right postage on! £1.08 a bargain normally when we send a single stem in packaging it costs £1.41 so by not packaging the flower not only have we not used the earth precious resources but we have also saved £0.33 on the postage and the time to pack and collect the materials we use to pack age with at the moment *brain starts chugging into action* this is good!

meanwhile in the post office we start discussing all the things we could possibly use to wrap the flower in (I have a list! this experiment is not over yet!) and end up deciding that even if its gets a little bit dirty its worth trying as an experiment and actually what a shame that postman charlie isn’t on today because he’d love to deliver one! (well charlie…. watch and see….)

bon voyage little flower… have fun!

well it started to get exciting…. postie richard was spotted in shropshire carrying our precious goods for delivery to naughty mutt

not only did it arrive but richard gave us loads of advice…. (i have a plan…. come back in a few days a see if it worked!)

“The lovely flower arrived safely this morning and I had a conversation with Richard the nice postie about it. He was really interested and said:
The flower doesn’t go through a machine at any point
Reinforce the hole you make on the card – and put it about 5mm further into the card (you can see on the pic it’s a bit frayed)
Use coir or a twisted natural type of string through the hole as the weakest part was the way the label is attached.
Don’t cut the label to a V shape as it weakens it – if you cut it then make a rounded shape” naughtymutt

in 24 hours without a scratch our little flower courtesy of royal mail reached shropshire and put a smile on our friend carla’s face and a cheeky grin on the naughty mutt!

This was good! now we want to do it again using reinforced holes and natural type string (thank you again richard!)… would you like to take part in packaging experiment take 1 and receive a free naked flower? all you have to do is promise to send us a picture of the condition in which it arrives… leave a comment here and email liz@henryandjayne.co.uk with your address

well new labels made and natural string located…. this morning i went to see bee in our local post office to send your flowers on their way…. everything crossed!!

and this one is going international… is it too much to soon? check back and find out!

well the rest of the naked flowers started their journey yesterday, bee weighed and stamped them as well as checking my labels!! she also remembered that we hadn’t put a customs declaration on the international ones… it was quite funny because we couldn’t decide if we actually needed a customs declaration if the package was packaged!… but we decided to put one on just for fun… she asked me if the flower had any value and i looked up and said it priceless… it’s handmade!

whilst i was causing havoc in the post office the first naked flower arrived at its destination… in wait for it *drum roll please* perfect condition! hooray and this is what sara had to say…

“Here it is and in perfect condition – lovely to find it on top of all the other post outside my front door and I prefer it like this than being packaged although I am not sure about the re-use of Xmas cards. I think I’d prefer a basic brown parcel label made from recycled materials or paper.”

really very pleased that no2 has landed safely and now we will work on improving the labels…. we will use what we have first as this is what we usually do and i really hate waste and i will ask the boys if we can come up with something. we try and use natural materials that have been made in the right way first of all and if possible ones that have been made by hand like our paper products handmade from upcycled cotton waste more often than not recycling uses more energy to to its job than starting from scratch… if the resources are available. we’ll let you know what we come up with!

latest news on no3 to land is it may have been stuck at the post office to collect because of underpaid postage?…. bee weighed each one….? lets see what happens!

well so far so good… most of the naked flowers have now reached their new homes in perfect condition… we’ve made a set on flickr with them all in save having a never ending blog post!…. almost time to think about how we can implement these fantastic results!…. we’re just waiting with our fingers very crossed about the naked flowers that we sent across the pond… as usual we’ll keep you posted!

its landed! and guess what…..

now we’re off to the drawing board…. we’ll be back soon!

my funny friend

i first came to india about 8 years ago i think but i can’t quite remember. two lovely friends persuaded me to come with them and have a break. after a few crazy days in days during which i can only describe as being in a state of culture shock we proceeded south of delhi to jaipur… the pink city. pink is one of my most favourite colours! a car arrived for our first day of sightseeing driven by a sparkly cheeky little man going by the name of nagar. part of me wants to cut a long story short but that not what this blogging lark is all about so i shall go on… nagar had forgotten to fill his car with petrol because he had been late for work so on the way to wherever we were going we had to make a stop at the petrol station… we had passed two petrol stations before we stopped to fill up. back in the car i asked nagar why we had done so and he stopped quickly in the middle of the road (very full of cars, vans cycles, cows and pigs), held my arm, reached into his pocket pulled out a piece of paper on which was a very childlike drawing of a house and a car with sunshine and animals and said in very proud broken english “mam… my dream… for my childrens” …”and” i said to him, “mam this petrol sation give coostomers lottery ticket… it is my dream” sitting in the car in the middle of the road we both laughed so hard tears streamed down our faces it was the beginning of my funny friendship!

hedge veg

Whilst on holiday we discovered a phenomenon that is pure, unadulterated Guernsey and – more than any other – sums up islanders’ approach to life. It’s nothing to do with politics, religion or philosophy. Rather, it’s all about vegetables and the way islanders love to buy and sell them from makeshift stalls at the side of the road. Welcome to the world of hedge veg.

Hit the islands’ country roads and you will soon spot it. The telltale signs are easy to detect – the car in front weaves around some hasty parking, a gaggle of locals are chatting on the verge next to some homespun ‘retail outlet’, fashioned from a table, crate or even driftwood. There will also be a hand written sign, promoting today’s offering. But what is most significant is that there will also be a small tin, box or even a milk churn – for shoppers to pay for their purchases. It all relies on honesty and it works. In an age of locks, security cameras and rising crime it’s reassuring to know that there is still somewhere where the people prefer to work on trust.

And there is certainly no shortage of stock. Anything from tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots and potatoes to roses, carnations, freesias and even felt flowers. Aside from the occasional crustacean, much of it originates from commercially sized greenhouses, which are still commonplace, whilst the remainder is pulled from kitchen gardens. Whatever its origins, Hedge Veg is the modern equivalent of bartering surplus home-grown produce with your neighbours. In Guernsey, that means the whole island. Long may it continue and spread!

after a bit of discussion on twitter we thought we’d see if we could find and share uk hedge veg hotspots! have a look at our map and see if there is one near you!! if you know of any comment and we’ll add them!