November 4, 2011

This is  recycled plant material from my Nov. 2 arrangement. I salvaged the arum leaves and positioned one of the red zinnas near the base of the vase.  Entirely different style from the previous arrangement. 

November 3, 2011---love grass

This is almost too complicated to explain (especially after a long day), but here goes. This morning, on my walk, I encountered all sorts of pretty things that wound up in the windowsill.

From the walk, came the hickory leaves (second from right) and the grasses (third from right). More on those later. Also in these vases are (far left) a late-blooming red rose with parsley stolen from yesterday's arrangement, black berries of liriope (second from left), which I noticed as I was walking up the driveway, and the core of a green pepper  (third from left), which was leftover from one I diced for breakfast and couldn't seem to throw away because its form was so interesting. 

On far right is tobasco bottle, which I really enjoyed playing with. In it is a parsley stem (with leaves removed; I used the leaves with the green pepper in a sweet potato hash-browny thing). Combined with the parsley stem (sans leaves) is a red pepper, which the bottle seemed to call for. Sounds easy, but to attach the red pepper to the pepper bottle turned out to be a challenge, since the neck of a tobasco bottle is so narrow (the better to keep you from putting too much hot stuff on anything!). The parsley stem had almost completely filled the opening, so I had to use a narrow grass stem, skewered through the pepper, and jimmy that, not the pepper stem, into the bottle.

But none of that was the visual event of the day (a perfectly beautiful one, by the way). The visual event of the day was related to the purple love grass in a field next to the Solite factory on my morning walk. When morning dew settles on purple love grass (Eragrostis spectablis), it looks like a cloud has settled onto the field. This particular grass has wire-thin stems and tiny, tiny seeds that all sort of flop over into masses of nothingness that manage to hold dew in a way seems to define "delicately ephemeral."  I wish I had a picture of it in the landscape to share. 

The relevant thing here is that I brought one lovegrass stem home just because I couldn't resist holding it in my hand. I knew it wouldn't show up in an arrangement, because it's just too tiny.  But when I was putting some other, bigger grasses in the third bottle from the right, I stuffed my lovegrass in there, too, just because I had it. What happened next still thrills me (which is probably, after a long day, why I still have the energy to describe this). I was trying to photograph the gleanings from my morning walk, etc. in the windowsill when I noticed the stems in the bottom of one vase were gleaming.  

Wow. There were tiny little bubbles of air all around the purple lovegrass stems. I have no idea why this happens, but I'm wondering if  it has anything to do with the way purple lovegrass stems hold dew in the morning, too. 

November 2, 2011

This is sort of a mess, and way more complicated that what I usually do in the windowsill, but it's what I ended up with today. The most interesting part of it is the container. I was taking some plant material out of a crockery vase (where it wasn't working) and putting it temporarily in a red plastic cup (just to keep it in water), when I realized it looked better in the cup than it had in the vase. So I started fiddling with it in the cup, and this is what I wound up with.

The materials are a mixture of things I'd harvested before frost (like the red zinnias), and things that are still  hanging on outside  (like apricot roses). Also included: arum leaves, parsley leaves, winterberry (from an earlier arrangement), and my beloved okra (two pods that I've used in half a dozen arrangements over the past few weeks). The swoopy stems are winter jasmine.

This conglomeration makes me think of something I realized years ago (but can't always act upon). The carpenter's joke "I keep cutting and it's still too short" has a corollary in flower arranging: "I keep adding things and it's still too complicated."

Here's a closeup of the red plastic cup to prove it really is a red plastic cup.

November 1, 2011---blue gentian!

I discovered blue gentian blooming in the garden yesterday; what a thrill! Louise Witherspoon gave me the plant last fall, and I planted it with little expectation it would survive. (Both Louise and I marveled that she had bought the plant for almost nothing at Lowe's; talk about finding a treasure in an unxpected place!) I completely forgot about it over the summer, then, while weeding yesterday, there it was standing strong among impatiens that had melted away in the cold. Would one of its flowers hold up if I cut it and brought it inside?  It seems so, becasue the flowers I cut look as perky this morning as they did yesterday afternoon.  Such an incredibly beautiful blue. Beside the gentian, to the right, is an osage orange; to the left, parsley.

October 31, 2011--tiny marigolds

The fun thing about this arrangement is how tiny it is.  The vase (a miniature watering can) is filled with REALLY tiny marigolds. I'll look up their name when I have a chance, because they are so much fun to grow. Each flower is about the size of a field pea and the foliage is diminutive, too. I did this arrangement for my granddaughter who loves tiny things. Unfortunately, I now know the vase leaks, but the arrangement held up long enough for her to enjoy it. Penny in photo below will show you how small this really is.

Or maybe this photo shows size better.

October 30, 2011

This is the same pansy arrangement that was in the windowsill on Oct. 26, but now it has an Oriental twig mat behind it.  The mat, which I had been using UNDER something else, surfaced when I was shifting some flowers around. I propped it up in the windowsill in this upright way temporarily, then realized what a great backdrop it would make for my pansy arrangement.  Voila--a new take on an old arrangement.

October 29--better

Yesterday I couldn't seem to bet my climbing spinach vines to work for me, but today I could. I like these two little arrangements much better than those I worked on yesterday. And, in the second photo, I think the camellia and rose blossoms work well together (which they refused to do yesterday).  The second arrangement also has a little piece of celosia and a hellebore leaf in it.

There is one thing puzzling me about these spinach vines. I have some growing up stakes in pots on the front porch and some growing up stakes in pots in the backyard.  The plants in the backyard have purpler stems. and bigger, often rosier leaves than the vines on the front porch and I don't think it's a matter of exposure. They look like two different kinds of climbing spinach, which is possible given how confused my seed orders sometimes are.  I want to save seeds from both to see what I get next year.