Cabintop flowers

When Sebastian and Izzi visited they brought me a lovely present - a Harveys of Lewes jug for putting flowers on the cabintop. Derided by some as a soft southern habit, this is nonetheless a tradition (or not) that I rather like. I filled it up with flowers from the yard before we left, and most mornings picked one or two new specimens from where we were moored - never too many; never enough to notice they were missing (and none, strangely, in Birmingham). I didn't pick the foxglove; it was a victim of veg pledge strimming. It was quite frustrating boating past profuse displays of gorgeous flowers, only to find none where we tied up.

The longest lasting were a blue flower, looking somewhat like a thistle or a cornflower, but with different leaves from either (if you enlarge the photo you can see one on the right hand side), that  collected from the bottom of the drive - fifteen days later I brought one of them back again. The pink hogweed (carefully picked) did well too, as did, to my surprise, the campion. The biggest failure, not even lasting half a day, was elderflower. On the whole it taught me that whilst wild flowers may not last if you pick them and bring them indoors, outdoors most seem to do very well.