February 14, 2012 -- Daphne odora

I had intended to pull together a whole array of fragrant things on the windowsill today, but I didn't do it. Instead, here's one bottle containing two Daphne odora blossoms and a curly willow twig. What a day it was for fragrances though. Mahonia is perfuming the whole back yard, and the incredibly fragrant Daphne is blooming by the front porch. I also spent a good part of the morning taking cuttings from scented geraniums, so I still have volatile oils from those plants perfuming my hands. All in all, a very fragrant February day!

February 13, 2012

For the record, the daffodils I picked yesterday with frozen stems thawed happily in the house and are still looking perky.

Today, on my walk, I picked buttercups (amazingly blooming by the roadside) and carried them home in a cup I also found along the roadside. Filled the cup with water from a ditch to keep the buttercups happy. Once home, I combined the buttercups with some other, more seasonal, things: red maple stem lined with bursting buds and male red cedar foliage with tiny little yellow "cones" forming at the tips. The container is a spool of trellising material with a large tube dropped into the center of it.

February 12, 2012 -- frozen daffodils

The daffodils on the left, I picked yesterday, when the weather was cold, but not freezing at Flower Camp. The daffodils on the right I picked this morning in Ashland, after a hard frost, when their stems were as hard as sticks. Outdoors, they'll thaw and raise their heads again. Inside, I'm not sure what they'll do. I should have waited until they thawed to pick them, but I was curious.

Below is my absolute favorite description of daffodils hit by cold. It's from Tinkers by Paul Harding.

"A late-spring storm capped the last daffodils and the first tulips with dollops of snow, which melted when the sun came back out. The snow seemed to have a bracing effect on the flowers; their roots drank the cold melt; their stalks straightened from the chilly drink; their petals, supple and hale, were spared the brittle coating of a trur freeze. The afernoon became warm, and with the warmth the first bees appeared, and each little bee settled in a yellow cup and took suck like a newborn."

February 11, 2012

When it came time to do my windowsill arrangement today, these where the two things in my immediate surroundings that interested me most visually. One was the Cook's Garden catalog (I spent a good part of the morning pouring over catalogs); the other was a coffee cup I'd dropped a vinca stem into (just to keep it in water as I washed the vase). Taken together, they seem to suit a winter day, although, in truth, John and I spent a fair amount of time outside today pulling trumpet vine off a chimney and pruning a Nellie Stevens holly. I felt bad throwing away a truckload of beautiful holly foilage. Should have used at least some of it in an arrangement.

February 10, 2012 -- pussy willow

The other day, when I used alder in an arrangement, the male catkins kept developing in the house and dropped a shadow of yellow pollen under each catkin. The pussy willow I've brought in today will do the same thing, but I don't care! (See yellow pollen already developing on biggest catkin below.)

Here are some pussy willow twigs in a black gin bottle. The catkins on these twigs are bigger than most, because this is some sort of hybrid pussy willow I grew from a cutting collected at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. (I promise I didn't steal it; the cutting was one given me to use in an arranging workshop there. It rooted and has grown like wildfire.)

January 9, 2012 --Champagne Pear

It seems I didn't want to deal with yesterday's honeysuckle vines. Instead, I just cleaned up the windowsill--discarding what was shot, providing fresh water to what was not. Here's the result.

What interested me most in that array was the label on the salad dressing bottle (Champagne Pear Vinaigrette) and the color of the Lenten rose (far right). So I pulled together what was already in the dressing bottle--pine and some brown sensitive fern sori (reproductive structures)--and combined it with the Lenten rose. Somehow, all these colors, together, say "champagne pear" to me.

February 8, 2012

Too tired to do much with this tonight. Maybe tomorrow I'll have a better idea. This is two interesting pieces of honeysuckly vine I pruned out of a tangle of "good" and "bad" honeysuckle yesterday. And this is the bucket I dropped them into, not intending it to be a vase. I readusted them to fit in the windowsill, but that's about it.