December 7, 2011--December daisies

What I had wanted to say about yesterday's arrangement (below) is that it included a tiny spring of nandina berries leftover from a big arrangement as well as a couple of stems of  a native grass with fluffy, white seed heads  (l;ittle blue stem). I dropped them into a partially-used spool of ribbon, also leftover from the larger arrangement.  So very easy and pretty dramatic. 

But what happens when you introduce red to the windowsill is that every subtler thing is visually overpowered.  I experience this every Christmas when I start decorating and introduce the first red ribbon. Game over: red wins. Today I had intended to just go with it--to play with nandina berries all over the place, but on my morning walk I encountered something not red that deserved a  place on the windowsill--several oxeye daisies. It's not all that unusual to find a few of them blooming in December (I remember journaling about the first I ever encountered, thinking I'd never see such a thing again), but they do usually bloom in early summer, so these late, late, late bloomers are worth noting. Anyway, I picked two and put them in a little bottle on the windowsill. They don't show up very well in photo below (partly because of the window mullions), but they do prove one thing: that white, particularly when it's out of season,  can compete with red.

  

December 6, 2011--ribbon spool

Long day that involved lots of ribbon and nandina. Better explanation tomorrow.

December 5, 2011

The windowsill looks spare right now, and I like it. To the right is redtwig dogwood in a pickle jar.

To the left is an old bollle with a spring of blooming spirea in it. Spirea blooming in December! How much fun is that?!

In between are the ripening tomato and climbing spinach vine from yesterday.

You can't really see it in the photo, but there's one cluster of red winterberry berries in the bottle with the spirea. They sort of jazz things up--like a cardinal in a tree.

December 4, 2011--long-lasting tomato, climbing spinach

I was vacuuming when I found material for today's "arrangement."  It seems a green tomato I'd used in an arrangement on Nov. 22 had dropped behind a radiator, where I encountered it this morning. It was no longer green but blushing red, and too pretty to throw away. I put it on top of a little liquor bottle, where it looked fine, but the real drama didn't occur until the morning light showed me its shadow on the cabinet nearby.

And look what has happened to the climbing spinach vine I used in windowsill arrangements on November 7 and October 29!  It has rooted! Talk about a surprise. This is a plant material I had never thought would hold up well in a vase, but not only has it lasted over a month, it shows absolutely no signs of wilting. I feel compelled to plant it in a pot of dirt and see if it will continue to grow over the winter (indoors), but it's so happy where it is, I sort of hate to disturb it.

December 3, 2011

This sort of subject does not lend itself to "try hard" photography. Often, if I try hard enough, I can overcome my lack of phytography skills by trying lots of options. But when things get really hard (red vase with red berries in white windowsill), trying hard isn't good enough. How to make the reds in the plant material and vase more dominant than the whites in the windowsill? Beats me. If I had more time, I'd just move the arrangement to a different windowsill.

                                                          

The winterberry is from yesterday's arrangement, the red cube-like vase from day-before-yesterday's arrangement. The moss is from the garden, and that's important to say. I am annoyingly outspoken on the subject of harvesting moss from public forests or other people's land. That is a no-no. I harvest it from a spot in my own yard where I know how fast it grows back, and I never harvest more than will reappear by the next season (sometimes sooner).  But know I'm not really on high moral ground here. Every time I use a plant material that could be overharvested from an ecosystem, I know I am encouraging others to harvest it from elsewhere. The winterberry, too, is from my garden, but I know how tempting it is to harvest winterberry from the wild. My fingers are itching to pick some along the Ashland Trolley Line, but so far I've resisted.

December 2, 2011---tissue box

This one's for Sue Tolson. The Tolson family spent time at Flower Camp recently and left behind some great tissue boxes. Couldn't resist using one of them as a container. Removed the tissues and replaced them with a jar of water. In first iteration, I added just winterberry berries (with some tissues stuffed around them). Then I tried adding yellow brocolli raab flowers to the mix. I think I like the first version better, because it's simpler.

My husband pointed out that I cheated here, because the tissue box isn't sitting on the windowsill (it's too wide to fit there). True, but arranging in that tissue box was the only thing that got my creative juices flowing today, and the arrangement is near the window.

December 1, 2011

This was so easy to create, so impossible to photograph. Here's how it evolved: In the barn, where I was emptying a shop that held vases and arranging materials, I came across this little square, red, cube-shaped vase. I don't care how much you want to avoid "the Christmas-merchandising machine" in December, you do get pulled into it. Or maybe there's a pull deeper than the one associated with merchandising?  Maybe, after November begins to brown, red is a magnet no matter what your aversion to "the Christmas machine"? For whatever reason, I was drawn to this red vase. And while in the barn I came across these stems of a native grass (little blue stem) I'd dried last year. I stuck them upright in the red cube and filled in around the rim with American holly. So very easy, and quite pretty, especially when the light hit the luminescent little blue stem seed heads. But photographing it...... impossible! It was fun to watch the light reveal shadows of the window mullions on the curtains, but to get the vase to read red and the seed structures to read white at the same time, I found impossible. Here's my best shot. (It actually looks better at night, as I'm writing this, but I don't have the energy to re-photograph it.)