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.

June 20, 2013 -- green & white/yucca & bssil

This basil had been sitting in a juice glass on the windowsill for a long time. In fact, if you look closely, you can see it has rooted! But this morning it got a special addition--yucca flowers. The big stalk I displayed on the windowsill yesterday morning was falling apart, and dropping florets all over the place, by this morning, so I picked some of the intact flowers (those on short side stems) off and added them to the basil. The greens and whites are so pretty together. And I've loved having a chance to get to know yucca flowers better. They're almost like orchids in color and texture.

June 18, 2013 -- listing yucca

I love this, because it represents what's going on outside. We've had so many storms and so much rain that yucca all over the state is listing or has fallen totally over and is lying on the ground. This is the only one I had that was blooming, and it was lying on the ground.

I enjoyed so much about doing this. Enjoyed handling the heavy, heavy flower stem, enjoyed looking for a vase heavy enough to support it horizontally, and enjoyed the result, because this flower scape looks absolutely luminous lit from behind.

June 17, 2013 -- larkspur, snaps, hydrangea

These colors are so pretty together: blue larkspur, pale yellow snapdragons, bluish and greenish hydrangeas. The arrangement is actually too big to qualify as a windowsill arrangement, but I pulled it together to take to a friend in the hospital and figured it could to double-duty on the windowsill.

This photo would be so much prettier if my ancient storm window frames were't so dark. But I like seeing my yellow pot out the window. It's filled with Sum & Substance hostas.

June 11, 2013 -- papayas, astilbe added

This is yesterday's arrangement with a couple of additions. The papayas wound up in the windowsill because, in a reversal of the way things usually work, they were too ripe when I bought them. I have a recipe for green papaya cole slaw that requires really green papayas, which I thought these (and others I'd bought) were until I started trying to grate them. They were too ripe, so now I'll just let them ripen completely (and look pretty in the windowsill as they do). To the right of the bottles of butterfly weed is a collection of astilbe leaves. I pulled them off the lower portion of some longer astilbe stems I was using in a much larger arrangement. Love their shape and color--especially with the greenish papayas and butterfly weed!

June 10, 2013 -- butterfly weed revisited, at night

This arrangement was so pretty in the windowsill last night--the flowers are orange butterfly weed and white feverfew. You can't really see it in the photo, but the deep, dark, mottled colors outdoors were gorgeous, too.

June 7, 2013 -- butterfly weed

I'm looking forward to playing with these tomorrow, but here's where this handful of butterfly weed flowers  landed tonight. What with all the rain, I've got butterfly weed plants that look like large azaleas (in size), but some of the stems were so long they were lying on the ground, so I cut them. These are a few that broke off as I was transferring them from one bucket to another. Notice how lush everything looks in the background--thanks to tropical storm Andrea.

If you look really carefully into the background out the window, you'll see a tall elderberry blooming. I didn't know it was there until I saw it out the window a few minutes ago--which will tell you something about how tall and out-of-control my weeds are!

June 6, 2013 -- couldn't resist

I couldn't resist posting something prettier than anything I could create on the windowsill this afternoon--the unadulterated view out the window. I'm particularly sensitive to the beauty of this tree, because one of its friends (a tree of about the same age) is now dying, due to a lightning strike, nearby

June 5, 2013 -- commemorative branch

I groaned--seriously groaned--when I inadvertently snapped this sweet bay magnolia twig off today. I was pulling bindweed out of a border, and one vine was twisted around the top of a happy, young sweet bay magnolia. I pulled too hard, and the soft new growth in the top of the tree snapped off. I was sick. The tree was doing so well, and I shouldn't have been so heedless as to pull too hard on the bindweed! The tree won't die, but it has lost its leader and will never be the tree it would have been if I hadn't snapped it off. Groan.

In the vase with the sweet bay twig is a stem of borage (leftover from snapdragon lineup of a few days ago) and, alas, some of the bindweed still clinging to the twig.

June 4, 2013 -- ribs of leafy greens

I indulged myself for lunch today and fried up some leafy greens with garlic. (That's not all I ate, but it was the healthy part!) As I stripped the ribs from some Swiss chard (I think it was Swiss chard; this leafy green in  a seed mix had a white central rib), I saw how beautiful the ribs were, gathered them in my hand sort of like feathers, then dropped them into this black pin holder. Might add a flower tomorrow; might not!

June 3, 2013 -- snapdragon line-up

I picked these short-stemmed snaps just to keep the plants blooming (and to relieve them of the stress of supporting these almost-spent blooms). But what looked weary in the garden now looks snappy (!) on the windowsill. And these colors are SO gorgeous.

 These are a variety of Butterfly Snapdragon called 'Chantilly' from Renee's Garden Seeds.