modern metallic vases with poppy pods, etc.

Just love how deeply dark these vases look in certain lights. Today I put springs of hellebore foliage, flowers from "hootenanny plant," and poppy pods in them.

overkill with the bindweed and geranium blossoms

I know this is overkill--this is the same arrangement I posted yesterday--but I've been enjoying it all day through thousands of different lights and wanted to try one more time to photograph it better. Part of the reason I like this so much is that anyone can do it with ridiculously ordinary materials--spent geranium blossoms and bindweed vines. And both will last a long time, but the bindweed (a terrible, awful very bad weed) will last FOREVER (even after it's been cut), and that's unusual for something so graceful and delicate-looking on a long, twining stem.

geraniums and bindweed

Walked outside thinking I'd pull a few weeds, but then thought better of it. Too hot. Plucked off a few spent geranium blossoms and pulled two or three bindweed vines and that's about it. I liked the two together, though, so I combined them in this contemporary vase and put the result on the meeting rail of the window frame.

orange poppy

These poppies last such a short time--which somehow makes them more valuable to me. I also love their origin--from a gardener I met when I knocked on her door to tell her how much I admired her poppies. Mrs. Gibson used to live on Rt. 623 near Ashland. Both Mrs. Gibson and her garden are now gone, but her poppies live on in my garden. "It's just a bed of beauty," she said of her bed of orange poppies.

peonies--from outside

Last week, for a workshop, I was trying to keep a passel of peonies from maturing too fast (keeping them in the refrigerator), but there were four buds I picked too early and those I was trying to hurry along by putting them in hot water and letting the sun hit them through the window. This was a surprising view I glimpsed of them from outside, as I came up the back porch steps.

And here they are from the inside.

They didn't open before the workshop, but someone used them, so maybe they opened later. 

fragrant rose in Bland's vase

This rose is an old one--a fragrant, thornless climber ('Zephrine Drouhin') that would be the perfect rose but for the fact that it's disease-prone. I moved it years ago to a chain link fence outside a dog run thinking it would die immediately, But it didn't. I give it absolutely no attention, but, here it is blooming 10 years after its banishment!  Noticed how pretty it looked this morning, and, around  noon, Bland Crowder "gifted" me this vase, which was perfect for a few blooms.

same stuff, different vase

This is the same green and gold (Chrysoganum) I used earlier in a test tube vase (now with some additional sprigs). This was fun to do because 1) it was easy and 2) I learned something about the plant material. This little yellow-flowering groundcover is almost a weed, but, doing this tiny arrangement, I learned the flowering stems are VERY malleable. I wanted them to droop and drape a little more than they did naturally, so I just massaged them with my hand a little to get them to present themselves where I wanted them. They were SO responsive!

green and gold

I felt really beat up by the weather today--too much time outside in the hot sun--so whatever I created on windowsill this afternoon had to be simple. This is just some sprigs of Green n'Gold (Chrysoganum)--a native groundcover--dropped into a little test tube vase.

pieces of things

These are all pieces of plant material that landed in my lap as a result of gardening and picking flowers for a workshop. The green, linear leaves are from daylilies I was dividing (pieces that fell off as I pulled the roots apart), and the other materials are sticks and stems of viburnum that I pruned off the bottoms of longer branches. Oh, and there's a piece of Harry Lauder's walking stick in this--a beautiful piece I saved from an arrangement Rosanne Shalf made for me. I was actually just holding these materials in this vase in the utility room when I realized how pretty they looked together. Adjusted  their positions just a bit to result in this.