Daffodils and Euphorbia

Hello spring! Here are some daffodils (confusingly named 'Geranium') combined with foliage from a house plant (begonia) and chartreuse Euphorbia flowers. I particularly love the Euphorbia flowers, from plants Lauren Thompson gave me.

violas in new vases

Can't tell you how much I love these new vases. Like everything about them: their color, their size, their shape. Thank you Marty Ross! Now I want to paint my whole house this lichen green.

daffodils and peace lily

In February, it's harder to find good, fresh foliage than it is to find daffodils, so after I picked these I started trolling for foliage to combine them with. Decided to harvest both flowers and foliage from a houseplant.

oddball colors

I'm crazy about these colors, because they aren't your usual Christmas colors. Apricot-colored vases filled with red, yellow, and orange peppers on red felt. The foliage is fetterbush.

strange september leftovers

Brought these green monkey balls and tomato red carnations home with me from workshop at Shrine Mont. They're now over two weeks old and still looking great on the windowsill.

Dogwood with book

Beautiful book with beautiful dogwood leaves. The leaves were even more beautiful two days ago, but my camera wasn't working then!

Sunflower head (without petals), tomatoes

These things (sunflower head, tomatoes) landed in my kitchen at the same time, and somehow wound up in a windowsill arrangement together. The sunflower head doesn't have any petals, but,with its dramatic green bracts, it was too pretty to throw away. I put it in the vase facing straight up, which made sort of a nest for the tomatoes. 

Michigan windowsill

Horsetail (Equisetum) collected from roadside in Montague, Michigan. Smaller than any Equisetum I've encountered before. 

white anemones

Now I know why brides love these white anemones with black centers so much: I can't take my eyes off of them. And they seem to be looking back at me! These are leftover from wedding flowers Kate and I did last weekend. I was worried about how staunch they would be, but one of these vases ran out of water and the anemone didn't wilt even then. Thank you Roy Houff for getting them to us in such good shape!

orange ranunculus

Yes, John is painting the house again (hence, all the scaffolding and ladders out the window). Loved this little leftover orange ranunculus with piece of cardboard included in a recent Chinese takeout food order. 

demitasse cup with Pieris japonica

This pretty little cup was a recent gift from a friend who is downsizing. I'm downsizing, too, but I couldn't refuse these! So sweet. And one little twig of Pieris japonica (Andromeda) looks so comfortable perched inside. 

long-lasting Berzilia

This (with the exception of the pear) is what's been sitting on my windowsill since January 6. The plant material in the terracotta vases is Berzilia, something leftover from an event that required florist flowers. I ordered one bunch of Berzilia just because I wanted to see what it looked like. This isn't the gray-flowering variety that's all over Pinterest and every bride in North America now seems to want. Its flowers (which look more berry-like than they do flower-like) are reddish to maroonish and its foliage (which resembles princess pine) is a great olive green. I'm crazy about it and would order it again in a heartbeat, but I may not need to; it seems to last forever!
P.S. The jar of pickled peppadews were a Christmas gift from Rosanne and Jerry Shalf--a blast of red that has also been an unflagging spirit-lifter this winter. I wouldn't dare eat them I'm enjoying looking at them so much!

You can barely see this because of all the "commotion"--ladder, fence, screen, etc.-- in the photo background, but this is one of the most satisfying arrangements I've done in a long time. The container is a triangular tube-ish thing with three holes in the top. I dropped some nasturtium flowers into it just to hold them until I found a different vase, but I loved the way they fell almost laterally across the top of the vase--still with their stems in water. What I like about his so much is how how clearly you can see the shapes and colors of the flowers. There's a tiny sprig of tomatillo foliage in this, too.

marigolds with feverfew

Rhonda Roebuck will recognize the greens in these tiny bottles. She was on a mission to pick some parsley, picked this feverfew foliage instead, and "disposed" of it by dropping it into these little bottles. I added the marigold blossoms this morning.

red peppers on upside-down vases

I turned these two vases over to let their bottoms dry out (they don't leak, but they sort of weep) and left them on the windowsill where they attracted these two peppers.

little red morning glory

This is a wildflower/weed I love. It's the little red morning glory (Ipomoea coccinea). This long piece was twirled around a tall mullein stalk I pulled out of the garden this morning. Too pretty to throw away.

tupelo leaf and sugar maple seeds

This isn't on a windowsill, but it's my little arrangement for today. I was trying, in as few strokes as possible, to capture what was going on outside (sort of a visual haiku). On my napkin are three sets of winged sugar maple seeds and one brilliant red tupelo leaf. It sounded like a shooting range on my side porch this afternoon, because the falling sugar maple seeds were hitting the tin roof and the tin magnified the sound of their strikes like a drum! Crazy that something so small could make such a racket!

blue hydrangeas

These hydrangeas were leftover from wedding flowers Kate and I did last weekend. Can't believe how much I like them on my kitchen windowsill! I thought they were going to be too fussy/floral to suit my house, but now I'm thinking I need more blue in my kitchen! The wood around the vase is a knothole Wendy Wadsworth gave me. The foliage (ridden with holes; it's August after all) is passion vine.

Japanese lanterns

It's been so long since I've posted a windowsill arrangement, I've almost forgotten how! Too busy "putting up" vegetables and drying things like this: Japanese lanterns. I love this simple little "arrangement" of a single, short Japanese lantern stem, but the reality of  my life right now is better depicted in the second photo: a house full of long Japanese lantern stems waiting to be stripped of leaves and hung all over the house to dry. They are hanging from chair backs and floor lamps and doorknobs! All beautiful but a little overwhelming.

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.