Egyptian walking onions

Love these onions, which have wonderfully wacky tops. Hard to photograph them, though. Had to way over-expose this so you could see their shapes.

one dahlia in wine glass

I'm lovin' these small-flowered dahlias (grown from seed). Somehow they seem more expendable than the expensive big ones.

dahlias in new vase

This is a little vase Lisa Mahlandt bought me at Martin's (a Virginia grocery store). I had no idea they sold such things. Really like it because of the three little narrow-necked bottles it holds. The flowers are dahlias I grew from seed, and I'm pretty crazy about those, too. The flowers are small, and single--unlike the giant ones most people grow from tubers--but they're perfectly suited for windowsill arrangements.

calendulas and mint in milk bottle

The most fun thing about this is that I can see the bottle sweating! This was one of lots of bottles of flowers I filled for a wedding this weekend, and I brought this one out of a very cool room to photograph it on the shed windowsill. The arrangement was so cool, water condensed on the bottle immediately.

wild sweet peas in bottle

This was so pretty with sun streaming through it this morning.

greens in green bottle

This is for Lorie Foley, who found this green bottle buried in her yard. In the bottle are two stems of celosia leaves, one yellow-green hosta leaf,  one stem of white Korean bellflowers (which you can barely make out in the photo), and one wisteria vine that isn't in the vase, it just sort of skims down diagonally. Its foliage won't live long out of water, but I couldn't resist positioning it this way.  I could have broken it in half, put the top half in water and the bottom half out of water (making it look like this without the "out of water" problem), but when you're arranging temporary things for yourself, no such shenanigans are necessary!

happy Selaginella!

So, how many days of almost non-stop rain have we had? Four? The best I can say is that I haven't had to water anything. The worst is that mushrooms coming up in my garden paths. Anyway, this Selaginella (spike moss) is EXTREMELY happy. In a normal summer, I'd be watering this baby almost hourly to make sure it doesn't dry out. Selaginella loves moist soil and humidity. But this year it thinks it's growing in a rain forest. I bought this little potted plant at The Greenhouse on Mountain Road (Glen Allen, VA), and dropped it into this tiny round basket (available from thearrangersmarket.com) a month or so ago without even removing it from its plastic pot. (The plastic pot is covered with "camouflage" moss I harvested from the surface of my brick sidewalk.) Usually this little arrangement sits on the side porch, but because I didn't feel like going outside to pick anything in the rain this afternoon, I decided to display it on the windowsill.

pansies passing, calendulas coming on in promise

Pansies are in their 7th inning stretch right now--getting leggy but all the better for cutting. And the calendulas (pot marigolds) are in their prime. I combined them here in a Queso jar. Much fun on a rainy day!

scented geranium and white Korean bellflower

I've been doing lots of big arrangements recently, but this little one, made from leftovers from a larger one, gave me more pleasure than any of them. These are leaf and flower snippets pulled off longer stems used in larger arrangements. The vase is a leftover, too. The name tag on this one (made by Mary Garner-Mitchell) was for a Liz who never showed up at a workshop where she might have used this tiny bottle (actually a Cracker Barrel syrup bottle) with her name on it.