three jugs of hydrangea

These three little jugs have taken up seem to have taken up permanent residence on my kitchen windowsill, because absolutely everything looks pretty in them. Today they're filled with white 'Tardiva' hydrangea blossoms with scented geranium leaves.

reflections (with green sedge flowers)

What I love about this is all the reflections in the window. The flowers in the bottle are green sedge flowers. I pull these plants out of the garden like the weeds they are, but I always have to save some of the flower heads. I've wrapped a little piece of black and white striped paper around the bottle in honor of Jane Shoenfeld, a Santa Fe painter who once taught at Flower Camp and displayed a huge sedge florescence against a backdrop of black and white (half of the florescence against black/half against white). Graphically gorgeous and I'll never forget it.

sunflowers--without petals

So--here's how the last arrangement I posted has evolved. Pulled the spent petals off some aging flower heads and added some more from the garden. For the record, I'm learning why most people don't grow huge sunflowers. When they fall down (or when you need to remove them) it's like removing a tree--lots of debris, a stalk like a trunk, and roots that want to take lots of garden soil with them. I spent about 3 hours tearing out a patch of spent sunflowers at Flower Camp on Saturday. When it was all over, I thought this must be the way a lumberjack feels!

steamy weather, sunny sunflowers

This gathering sunflower blossoms and spent seed heads are all from one towering plant that was toppled by a thunderstorm Sunday night. The goldfinches will miss them outdoors, but it's nice to be able to enjoy them this way, too.

coxcomb remnant

On Friday I did some giant arrangements that included big, hunky stems of coxcomb, and as I trimmed the lower  stems, some tiny flowers like these were among the debris. I'm not sure I don't like these tiny remnants better than the huge flowers at the tops of the stems! At any rate, they are all really saturated colors, like this rich, velvety red.

'Charming Lady' gladiolus

Note to self:  grow more of this beautiful gladiolus next year! It's Gladiolus tubergenii 'Charming Lady' from Brent & Becky;s Bulbs, and I  have it only because of an impulse purchase I made there in April.  'Twas a tiny bag of six little bulbs then. Now it's a collection of thrifty little plants with these gorgeous pink-backed-with-white, almost striped, blossoms. LOVE IT! And if I'm really planful (unlikely), I'll remember to grow it near Job's Tears and pink phlox, because it looks so pretty with them.

half-dead artichoke flower

I think this is a half-dead artichoke flower. But it could be a half-dead cardoon flower. I'm growing them both in the garden this year, their labels have disappeared, and they look almost identical. Beautiful foliage (see second photo), but I planted them way too close together and, with all the rain we've had, some of them have rotted out from the bottom. I harvested one almost-dead blossom last week and, even though I didn't even put it in water, it kept growing this little top knot of lavender blue fuzz. Reminds me of that line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "I'm not quite dead yet!"

gourd, tomato, peppers

The afternoon was long, the urge to create strong. That's how this happened--plus the fact that 1)this gourd had fallen off the vine and its top had broken off, 2)this tomato happened to be in the windowsill, and 3)I broke two cayenne pepper plant branches off by accident and had harvested these tiny green ones from it. Somehow, they all wanted to play together!