elephant garlic

Impossible to photograph this,because it's so three-dimensional (and the window mullions distract so). To show up properly in a photo, this arrangement needs an ininterrupted black background.  Still, I couldn't resist posting it, because it's so interesting in real life.  The flowers are elephant garlic blossoms on twisted scapes in a vase surrounded by another wood knot Wendy Wadsworth gave me.

beargrass and blue tansy

Ok, this is wacky, but I love it because of the "ingredients." First came the beargrass. Kate and I ordered it for a big event in Richmond, but it came in "bad." Beargrass never comes in "bad" (it's nearly indestructible), but this batch really was half dead and smelly when it arrived. So it wound up in my brush pile. However: when I encountered it there days later, it looked pretty good! Must have benefited from the fresh air. So I gathered up a bunch of it, twisted it into a loop and combined it with the next pretty thing I encountered on my way to the house--blue tansy or Phacelia tanicitifolia. This cover crop (which was growing in my vegetable garden) is absolutely gorgeous, and, miraculously, also makes a great cut flower. Learned about it from Betsy Trice, who gave me some seeds. It's an early, cool season plant (today I was pulling it out and gathering seed), but, boy, what a discovery (via Betsy) it is!

red poppies

So: a week or so ago, Kate and I did flowers for a large event in Richmond (48 table arrangements plus other stuff). My garden was full of annual poppies at the time, and although we knew it was dangerous to include any of them, we included a few. I doubt many of them held up (despite the fact that we did all the right things to condition them), but guess what did hold up? The leftover poppies I just dropped into water without any conditioning! Go figure. They lasted several days on the windowsill--here combined with other leftover red flowers The little piece of wood is a gorgeous knot Wendy Wadsworth gave me.