April 30, 2013 -- daffy with onion greens

This is a daffodil plucked from yesterday's arrangement combined with some onion greens leftover from a breakfast omelette, in a tiny little ketchup bottle (saved from a room service tray), standing on a stack of coasters I bought at Longwood Gardens. Crazy how many disparate things contributed to this simple arrangement!

April 29, 2013 -- remnant pansies, daffodils

I couldn't let those daffodils in Saturday's bucket go without giving them more "facetime" on the windowsill, so I combined them with pansies leftover from Friday.

I love these colors together (lemon yellow and lavender-blue), and the yellow of these daffodils is so similar to the yellow in the pansy faces.

April 27, 2013 -- forgotten daffodils

This is what happens when you have a case of the "too much to dos" (or maybe just a bad memory). I picked these daffodils two weeks ago and put them in the refrigerator in the shed to save them for Garden Week arrangements (last weekend). Yesterday, as I was putting tulips in the shed refrigerator to save them for a wedding two weeks from today, I discovered the daffodils! They still look great, but I wish I'd remembered I had them last weekend. I guess I'll just have to enjoy them myself!

This is a late blooming, butterfly (split coronna) daffodil that I love. Can't remember its name, and now I can't find it in the Brent and Becky's Daffodils catalog, but I'm sure I bought it from them. Every year I think it's gotten worn out and won't bloom again, but it's been blooming in the same spot for at least 10 years. .

April 26, 2013 -- blue pansies, hoppy toad

Pansies don't usually have stems this long, but these were growing in a pot in the shade where they've gotten plenty of water. I picked them because they were already getting leggy. Love them massed like this.

And here's the little plaster toad I used the other day in a new setting. He's hopping all over the kitchen! 

April 24, 2013 -- fifty shades of green

This is sort of a train wreck design-wise, but I was just playing with greens yesterday, and this was the result. It all started with some chartreuse napkins I found in the bottom of a trunk. I wrapped those around the bottoms of some bottles in a rack and added green hellebore flowers.

The most interesting thing here is the way the space under the napkins/bottles went green from light reflected off the napkins.

April 23, 2013 -- toad

I had dropped some Lenten rose flowers into this basket of bottles and was thinking about putting another Lenten rose in the middle, when a toad across the room caught my eye. It's not a read toad, just a stone? plaster? one, but it looks so real I've always loved it and had it sitting on the kitchen table. Before plopping it on the middle bottle, I went out to find a lily pad for it to sit on. A small May apple leaf did the trick.

April 21, 2013 -- shed window

I was cleaning out the shed yesterday, and the light coming through the window was gorgeous. Decided to do my windowsill arrangement on that windowsill. Greenish flowers in the little green vase are Lenten roses; orange flowers blooming outside the window are kerria.

April 19, 2013 -- too much

What this arrangement needs is a good editor. These are scraps I brought back from a venue were I was doing very large arrangements today, but even scraps can compete with each other. Included are hellebore and mahonia flowers, violet foliage, a tulip bud, and a piece of wood that broke off from a gigantic piece of driftwood.

April 18, 2013 --more wild violets

The reflections and extraneous shadows in this photo are almost as illuminating as the intended subject of the photo. The intended subject was another little clump of wild violets that I transplanted into a vase. And this time I sat the vase on a Japanese pedestal. Reflected in the window on the left are a couple of the violet leaves. Reflected on the right is my white night gown, which I am wearing at 8 p.m. because I am so pollinated (i.e. suffering from allergies) that I could go to bed right now and sleep until... well...say... maybe June when all the pollen has settled?

 

April 16, 2013 -- spring mix

This is just a mix of leftovers and new flowers blooming in the garden--purple violas (far right), tulips, Lenten roses, Chinese temple bells, and pussy willow twigs in the larger bottles (left). I think theres a little leftover piece of wild mustard in this, too. and I know there's one stem of yellow archangel.

April 15, 2013 -- NC wildflowers

I visited the North Carolina Botanical Garden yesterday, where I was reminded how beautiful southeastern wildflowers are. Cultivated flowers seem sort of garish and over-obvious in comparison. Table decorations at a luncheon I attended were done by Wendy Wenck from wildflowers at the Garden. So beautiful! Nancy Easterling gave me one to take home, and here it is in the windowsill. I know it includes yellow ragwort, sedge foliage, and blue woodland phlox, but I'm not sure what the creamy white flowers are. From a shrub, I think. Maybe a native spirea?

April 12, 2013 -- fragrant viburnum

Spring is arriving at warp speed in Virginia. Redbuds, which were late, went from bud to bloom in about 5 seconds. And I totally missed the bud stage (which is my favorite stage) of this viburnum (Viburnum carlesii). It's in full bloom now and fabulously fragrant.

There's leftover aucuba foliage in these bottles, too. It's pretty ragged, and I should probably have replaced it.

April 13, 2013 -- wild violets

I don't own (or need to own) many precious objects, but today I found myself wishing I had some priceless china vase for these wild violets. They seemed to deserve it! Instead, I dug them up roots and all and put them in the most precious thing I had, this little china bowl.  

April11, 2013 -- iris leaves

Gardened and cleaned all day at Flower Camp today. Most jobs proved about twice as hard as I'd expected, but one--raking dead river oats foliage out of a patch of irises--was mercifully easy. Unfortunately, my delight in finding this job easy resulted in irrational exuberance, and I knocked off some iris foliage by mistake. Couldn't throw it away, so I carried it back to the house and dropped it into this plastic cup. It's so beautiful, even in this inelegant container.

April 9, 2013 -- windflowers

Here they come--the catalogs offering bulbs to plant for next spring. And spring has just arrived (bearing 80 degree temperatures!) in Virginia. The nice thing this catalog brought with it was a reminder that some of the flowers blooming in the garden were windflowers (Anemone blanda, I guess). I have no idea where they came from--a friend, a freebie with another bulb order? They are gorgeous in the garden and pretty impressive in the windowsill, too. I keep waiting for them to close up, but it hasn't happened yet.

April 8, 2013 -- wacky radish

Weeding today I came across some strange things, including this wacky radish. Displayed as it is here (in pin-holder vase with dark tile under it), it reminds me of a little bonsai tree. Or maybe an animal with leafy antlers?

April 7, 2013 -- yellow violas and marsh marigolds

These little flowers landed in the vase exactly as I had gathered them in my hand. And before I dropped them into the vase I almost swooned from the fragrance of the violas!  The flowers are yellow violas and marsh marigolds. Love the faces of the violas. And I hope you can see the forsythia blooming in the background. It is just a very yellow time of year!

April 5, 2013 -- henbit

I weeded some perfectly beautiful clumps of henbit and purple deadnettle out of the garden today, but the prettier of the two is definitely henbit. Love the little ruffles of leaves and the buds that look like droplets of magenta ink. If I had another minute, I'd run to the garden to get a little piece of purple cabbage to add to this, but I don't.

April 4, 2013 -- Chinese temple bells and marsh marigolds

I think there is a name for the fact that blue-lavenders don't translate well in photographs. The Ageratum Effect maybe? Whatever the term, it seems to be operating here, because these Chinese temple bells in this photo are a prettier blue-lavender than they appear. And they're gorgeous with yellow marsh marigolds outdoors, so I tried the same combination here.

Verdict: all this is prettier outside. 

April 3, 2013 -- weedlings plus jonquils

To yesterday's weedlings (curly kale seedlings I was weeding from the garden), I added tight bunches of jonquils--small, fragrant daffodils with round stems. This was actually a give-away arrangement that I let pose for a minute in the windowsill.

I changed vases, too--trading the jelly jar for a basket lined with a water-holding container.

April 2, 2013 -- weedlings

I should have thinned the curly kale months ago, but...I just got around to it today. The seedlings--which struck me as weedlings--were crowding each other out, but the ones I removed were still too leafy and pretty to discard. I put them in a bucket planning to wash and eat some of the leaves, but I decided the largest ones were too pretty even to eat; they ended up in this little jar on the windowsill.

  

April 1, 2013 -- yesterday's arrangement, tweaked

These are the same materials I used yesterday, but I rearranged them a bit to make some of my favorite flower faces show up better. I'm really enjoying this vase--a collection of bottles in a rustic wire carrier. There's not much that doesn't look pretty in it.