MUMMY DOING THE FLOWERS

Last Christmas I bought myself a lovely present – a painting. I spotted it at a Swedish online auction and immediately felt that I wanted to have it in our home. The colours, the scale, I loved everything about it. Then I had a closer look and discovered that the title is ‘Mamma fixar med blommorna’ which translates as ‘Mummy doing the flowers’ and well, I sort of had to have it. Because that’s what I do. A few months later the painting arrived in London and it suits our sitting room so well, it is as if it was meant to be here with us.

As I was lying on the sofa yesterday enjoying my painting, I felt as though I was looking at myself up there on the wall. I thought: that’s how my little boy will remember me. Fixing with the flowers, always telling him to stick his nose into a bloom and draw in the scent. Earlier in the day our home schooling session kept getting interrupted because every time I looked around the room, I saw this bunch of tulips from the garden illuminated by the most amazing afternoon sunlight. Of course I reached for the camera, I must have got a hundred photos of those flowers. And I realised that I have taken this whole thing to another level – not just growing and doing the flowers but photographing them all the time too. Can you see the shadow of me and my phone in the photo above? It is sort of like a selfie really. With flowers in it.