May 31, 2013 -- moss on bottle of veggie flowers

This isn't much of a photo, but there are actually a couple of interesting things going on here. One is the moss tied to the neck of the bottle. Saw something similar in a magazine recently and stole the idea. The other is the mat the bottle is sitting on. It's a coaster I bought in the Longwood Gardens gift shop--tiny rounds of wood glued to fabric backing. I bought the coaster with the intention of making something similar myself, but I don't know that I ever will. Suddenly, it looks too hard! The flowers in the vase are sweet little white ones blooming on a plant in the vegetable garden. At first I thought they were radish flowers, but they're not. I honestly can't identify them, which seems to happen to me more and more as 1) I sow packets of seed that include mixes of various edible greens, and 2) my memory gets less and less reliable.

 There's also one stem of Nigella (love-in-a-mist) in this bottle.

P.S. Relative to yesterday's post: the calendulas in the wine glasses are not from Select Seeds. Today I happened upon the seed packet I'd saved to remind me which calendulas I was growing. They're 'Flashback' calendulas from Renee's Garden--the prettiest ones I've ever grown.

May 30, 2013 -- calendulas in wine glasses

The calendulas blooming in the garden this year are prettier than any I've ever grown before. Must look up the variety (from Select Seeds, I think), but their unusual lushness is probably due to unusually wet, cool spring. Picked a bunch of them today and dropped them into these wine glasses with some Chinese temple bell seed pods (the linear green things) and some nice, fat Heuchera (coral bell) leaves.

May 29,2013 --conga line of Swiss chard

These are Swiss chard stems that needed to be cut down because they were going to seed. But they were too pretty to throw away, so I lined them up in these glass vases. The stems remind me of legs in a conga line--a little out of sync!

May 23, 2013 -- iris and comfrey foliage

This iris, which is iridescent shades of peach and lavender, was a gift from a friend, and it never blooms that I don't think of her. I picked just this one blossom today (most of the irises are beginning to fade) and added some comfrey foliage (with small purple flowers) as I held the iris in my hand. So simple, so beautiful.

May 21, 2013 -- delicate flowers

I actually did this arrangement yesterday but forgot to post it. It started with the delicate blue forget-me-nots, which I wanted to arrange in an elegant little cut glass container, but I couldn't find one (!), so I used this wine glass instead. Then I started adding other diminutive things: tiny red poppies, hawkweed flowers, Chinese temple bells. After I took this photo, I also added some buttercups. 

The most stunning thing in this arrangement is the little red poppies, which are so delicate many of them had lost their petals by the time I got them in the house. If you look carefully, though, you can see that one is still in bud and it opened later in the day. 

May 19, 2013 -- tall snapdragon

Everything in my garden is unusually tall (including the weeds), because we have had so very, very much rain. The ground is so wet, I shouldn't have set foot in my Buckingham County garden, because its red clay soil compacts so badly. Still, I had to get after those weeds, and while weeding, I broke off this snapdragon stem. Had to display it in a way that shows how tall it is, because my snapdragons have never before been this tall.

May 17, 2013 -- three clovers

There are three different wild clovers in this little bottle (two red clovers and a white clover), and they are all so pretty.

May 16, 2013 -- confession

I didn't take this photo today (May 16). I took it yesterday, which seems like a lifetime ago. That was the day I left Ashland for Hot Springs, Va. On May 16 I arranged, in this vinegar cruet, two white single peonies, some wild mustard seed pods, a sprig of  (? a Vietnamese herb that begins with H),  and a couple of deep purple heuchera leaves. The amazing thing about this arrangement (to me) is not what's in it but that I'm alive to post a photo of it today, because, this afternoon I traveled through two hail storms (one in Charlottesville, one in Shannon Hill) and what seemed like a tornado (near Rockville) to get back to Ashland. The confluence of events it takes to have the privilege of creating something as "optional" a flower arrangement never ceases to amaze me.

May 15, 2013 -- leftovers in pretty colors

These are snippets of materials left over from larger arrangements I was working on this morning. As they fell into my hands, I tucked them into this little inkwell. Included are American wisteria, wild mustard seed structures, a heuchera leaf, some pea foliage, and a pink rose.

May 14, 2013 -- more buttercups

I headed outside to pick violas and dock today, but I encountered these buttercups along the way and couldn't resist them. Is there anything prettier? I associate buttercups with Mother's Day not only because they are always blooming then but also because they were one of my mother's favorite flowers. We actually moved some out of a field into a garden one year.

May 12, 2013 -- nandina remnants

As soon as I got home from traveling, I launched into doing flowers for a wedding. My shed was filled with flowers for three days as a friend and I worked on wedding arrangements, and we had enough flowers left over to do thousands of windowsill arrangements. But I'd sort of had my fill of flashy flowers by the time it was all over, and the only things I didn't want to throw away were these three remnant stalks of nandina. I'd stripped them of most of their foliage (to use elsewhere), but I still loved these naked, almost leafless stems. Love their dark brown color, knobby-ness, and oriental look.

May 11, 2013 -- many windows and a windshield

I've been dutifully making my windowsill arrangements, even while out of town, but I haven't been posting them. Here are a few:

This is a wonderful adobe windowsill in Santa Fe. The weeds (sage and wild mustard seed structures) are in a coffee mug. I jammed a little foil bag of coffee grounds into the mug with the weeds to make them stand up.

Here's the same window viewed from indoors.

Below is a bathroom window, also in Santa Fe. I've always wanted to arrange something in one of these glass block windows, but the day I had one, I had nothing to arrange with. Hence, the apple. 

And this is the "windowsill" of my car. I grabbed an orchid off a banquet table for this "arrangement." 

(Actually, I asked permission of the ladies who had done the orchid arrangements before appropriating one near my plate.) 

May 6, 2013 -- windowsill in Abiquiui

These flowers are artificial. In fact even the water in the glass vase is artificial-- some sort of acrylic material. But the beautiful light coming through this window at the Abiquiui Inn was real, and I couldn't resist moving this found arrangement into it. The calla lilies are appropriate, because Georgia O'Keefe's home is in Abiquiui, New Mexico (and O'Keefe, of course, painted lots of calla lilies and irises).

May 4, 2013 -- it had to be an iris

Staying at the Abiquiu Inn, near Georgia O'Keefe's home, the flower in the windowsill had to be an iris, which the Inn owners had conveniently provided in nearby gardens.

May 3, 2013 -- in Santa Fe

This little vase of ranunculus and daisies was on the breakfast table this morning at a B&B in Santa Fe. I moved it to a nearby windowsill where it was nearly impossible to photograph. Gotta arrange something in an adobe windowsill before I leave New Mexico!

April 31, 2013 -- a handful of buttercups

Gathered these buttercups as I walked yesterday. Nothing prettier. And it seems my window likes butter, because the flowers are reflected in the glass!

I tied an onion around this glass vase just to make it less floristy-looking.