April 27, 2012 -- beheadings

I did lots of beheading in the garden this afternoon. First, I discovered my spinach was bolting (going to seed) already, so I snipped off its flowerheads. Amazing how much pollen spilled as I did it! The snipped pieces were just too pretty to throw away though, so I dropped them into these little vases. I think I could distribute these better to make them look prettier.

Then I cut flowers from my sweet William, which wasn't going to seed or even waning, but I wanted to make sure it would still be blooming on May 19 (for a wedding), so I snipped off some blooms in their prime (to bring on new, younger blooms). This was painful, but necessary, and it resulted in a pile of very short-stemmed blooms I was about to throw into the compost heap when I realized I couldn't do it. Instead, I brought the blooms inside and used them almost like paving materials in this long, low vase. What I really needed was a grandchild at my elbow, because he/she would have had a better idea how to use these short-stemmed flowers.