June 29, 2013 -- zinnia in borrowed windowsill

I picked this zinnia (and some hosta flowers and weed foliage) in the garden of friends. Then I borrowed one of their candle holders, and their windowsill, to display them. If I'd had a floral tube, I could have turned this candle holder into a real vase, but I didn't, so the flowers aren't in water. Very temporary.

June 28, 2013 -- garlic scapes and fancy shapes

I had so much fun playing with these two garlic scapes and several stems of a grass called 'Frosted Explosion.'  (Seed source for this beautiful annual grass was Johnnny's Selected Seeds, I think). I played with this combination in all sorts of orientations and in the process inadvertently pulled the sheath off one of the grass stems. What this revealed was hundreds of tiny stems within the main stem. What a delicate, delicate grass this is!

Not sure which of these arrangements I like better. The round, poorly lit, thing on the windowsill is an immature Osage orange.

June 27, 2013 -- so much from so little

This little arrangement was a gift from Catherine Ellyson. I love the way it makes you take a closeup look at tiny things you might have overlooked in the garden. Among them: one hydrangea floret with green buds, sky blue plumbago flowers, a sprig of variegated thyme (at least I think that's what it is), and the graceful tip of a small-leaved ivy. Around the back of the arrangement, where you cant' see it, is a beautiful little white rose. So, so sweet!

June 25, 2013 -- daylily in ketchup bottle

This daylily blossom popped off a plant this morning when I struck it, accidentally, with the hose. I couldn't stand just throwing it away, so I brought it inside and jammed it into this little ketchp bottle, where it looks really pretty. I love the morning light in this photo, too. The green stem reaching over from the right is a garlic scape--part of a cluster of them in a nearby vase.

June 24, 2013 -- hollyhocks, lilies, snapdragons, ETC!

This was an attempt to capture the lushness of what's going on in the garden right now. This arrangement is bigger than any self-respecting windowsill arrangement should be, but...so were the flowers! It's hard to make a small arrangement with a hollyhock, although I should try. It was really this combination of colors that thrilled me: pale pink hollyhocks with magenta centers, dusky pink Asiatic lilies, bright pink catchfly (Silene armeria), yellow and peach snapdragons, and interesting wild grasses. And, unbelievable as it may seem, most of these stems are garden discards! The snaps needed to be cut because they were on the ground or on the way to seed, the hollyhocks were suffering from a bad case of rust on their lower leaves, the catchfly I pulled by accident. The lilies.. well, yes, I cut those and the grasses for their beauty.

Up close view of these wonderful colors below. 

  

June 23, 2013 -- chard leaves

This isn't from today--I actually dropped these Swiss chard leaves into bottles day before yesterday--but here they are in a photograph. Two interesting things here: these were the "bad" leaves--the ones that didn't make it into a stir fry, but look how pretty they are! And I didn't notice until I saw the photo that the two bottles on the right still had some fat, green yucca stems in them (stems I'd cut off then just sort of warehoused in these bottles). For this photo, I should have added a yucca stem to the bottle on the left, too, but who knew, it would matter?! Goes to show you that what's under the water matters as much as what's above it in an arrangement like this.

June 21, 2013 -- black-eyed Susan, etc.

This arrangement (sitting on a Flower Camp windowsill) is in a little pitcher a friend made. The leaves are from river oats and sedum; the flowers are a black-eyed Susan and butterfly weed.