As the last of the summer flowers begin to call it quits until spring, I collected flowers for today’s In a Vase on Monday, hosted each week by Cathy at Rambling in the Garden, that I may not see many of for the next few months, while the weather is cooler.

The Hydrangea shrubs look extremely healthy since the weather began to cool slightly; however, the flowers are looking just a tad battle-weary. They have been fighting the hot summer’s days for a while now, and are preparing to hibernate for winter. I still love their huge, showy blue blooms though, and picked nearly all the flowers that were left on the shrubs, bar a couple that may still grow larger.

The vase I chose for the Hydrangeas is one I had forgotten about! It lives in the guest bedroom, an old-style wash jug and basin with a dainty blue design. The design can just be seen in the first photo as a reflected image, so another day I will choose flowers to display in the vase that don’t insist on hiding the design!

The intricate detail of each flower, made up of several tiny, individual, flower-like sections is a wonder of nature, as far as I am concerned. Every year, I have to take at least one close-up of a flower.

On the wall in the guest bedroom, I have a canvas of a vase of hydrangeas, which can be seen on the wall behind the vase. The vase is sitting on top of a chest of drawers.

And here is a close-up of the picture. I really am a sucker for all things “Hydrangea” related.

As I have mentioned previously, the flowering season for the roses I adore is drawing to a close also, so I wanted to take full advantage of showing some more roses before they end.

This week, I have mainly David Austin’s ‘Roald Dahl’ roses in the vase, and as you can see, this photo shows some of the imperfections caused by summer heat and hungry insects.

David Austin’s ‘Jude the Obscure’ is also showing signs of heat affected petals. In spring, however, when the roses begin to bloom again and the weather isn’t quite as hot as in summer, the roses will look … well … just as pretty, but with less imperfections.

A cluster of Periwinkles growing beneath the shade of a Frangipani tree have recently started blooming, so I added a few stems to the vase, along with a pale pink salvia that has also just started to flower again.

In a tiny vase – a miniature wash jug and basin – I chose an assortment of miniature roses, mainly ‘Chameleon’, and one lilac ‘Love Potion’ which can be seen at the front of the vase.

The deep purple Tibouchina flower is from a recently planted shrub. Being such a young plant, I hadn’t expected it to flower so soon, so these beauties are a lovely surprise.

The daisies are beginning to flower again now. I have two plants of this gorgeous deep salmon-orange colour, and these two are the first on one of the plants. Before long, I will have enough daisies in bloom to fill a whole vase. 🙂 And on the right is a purple salvia.

As always, the tiny vase will spend the next few days beside my desk. Last week’s vases lasted until the end of the week – five whole days – which is a huge improvement on previous summer flowers, which started dropping after a couple of days. Now the weather is cooling, the flowers are much happier when they are brought indoors.

Also, since the weather has been slightly cooler, I have been spending more time in the garden. So if I temporarily go missing, as I have this past week, you know where I’ll be. 😉