Hints and tips:
...In the house we light a fire, and there are loads of paperwhites and hyacinths, and yellow daffodils, which I try to force [to bloom] in time for Christmas....
...My children still have stockings, I’m afraid. There will be five to six, maybe up to 10 things in them. We all pile on to the sofa or one bed, and everybody opens their things....
...The delicate specimens are so evocative of their subjects – which might be a tulip or hyacinth with its bulb and roots intact or an unruly branch of brambles....
...“It was strange, because the woman sounded like Hyacinth Bucket,” Healey told me, referring to the British sitcom character....
...I’m a big Messel fan, and would have loved to have owned this fabulously odd piece....
...He has flattened my wild-flower area by rolling around on it so I’m going to have to fence that off with some chestnut paling,” she says....
...Email him at lukeedward.hall@ft.com and follow him on Instagram @lukeedwardhall I’m working from home....
...“I’m driven by a desire to respect the entire animal. Throughout history, bone ash has been used for furniture making, distilling wine and making bone china....
...“That’s why I’m still making theatrical dresses. There are too many clothes on this planet now. I believe people want to see more ‘fashion’ than ‘clothes’.”...
...I planted bulbs in the autumn and they turned into tulips and hyacinths.”...
...“I’m a gardener, but never before have I been concerned about when exactly a plant might flower: it’ll flower when it wants to,” says Jones....
...British comedy is famous for returning to this topic relentlessly, often through vehicles such as Keeping Up Appearances’ Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced “Bouquet”), whose clumsy attempts at social climbing...
...At home, my hyacinths are in full bloom, their scent is intoxicating. I retch a bit beside some bins, hoping it will help. Antoine returns, with Fran rehearsing her neat new skills behind him....
...Every year I’m asked to predict the “latest trends in Christmas decor”. I’m not particularly fond of the word “trend” at the best of times....
...Fourteen is a lot of parcels and I’m not a huge fan of post-room chic. My neighbour travels a great deal. “Do I have to?” I said....
...Risqué is both fresh and leathery, with notes of bergamot and patchouli, cedar wood, vetiver, rose, jasmine and hyacinth....
...There is the philanthropic and bosomy Lady Hyacinth, who carries a disabled-rights placard reading “United for Imbeciles and Idiots”. (Oh, Monty Python!)...
...Over the years I’ve undertaken so many long-distance walks in, out and clear across the Great Wen, but of late I’m beginning to find myself as captivated by the psychic charge very short peregrinations deliver...
...I benefited from 31 glorious years of hands-on grandfathering and if that’s not enough to absorb a few lessons, then, frankly, I’m the one to blame....
...A hyacinth, for instance, evokes the winter of 1949 when Kelly, damp, cheerless and cold in his Parisian hotel room, longed for the sweet breath of spring....
...We also see howler and capuchin monkeys, giant otters and hyacinth macaws....
...The bespectacled billionaire commodities trader was guided by an aide as he walked through the hyacinths and old English roses in the grand marquee – his first public outing since this month’s float....
...The hotel has a nautical aspect, facing out over a broad lagoon where water hyacinths grow like weeds....
...The gardens are made from rafts of water hyacinth covered in soil and dung, which, in turn, support crops....
...“I’m just not the kind of person that this happens to,” she exclaimed but the box said otherwise. (She was a tiny bit disappointed about the cake, though.)...
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