Animas

These long beans feel like skin, but not human skin... I'm thinking of hippopotamus. An eggplant colored hippopotamus.

Bowl O' Honeydew, 3 ways

 These days my garden is stalled out with the onset of the August coastal fog (which frankly makes me feel a little postal some days - to this east coast girl, it's just not summer). So we don't really get the heat needed to grow honeydew melons. I found this unusual one at the infamous Marin County Framer's Market this past Sunday.
http://www.agriculturalinstitute.org

Aside: Even though I grow some veggies, I go to this market come rain or shine every Sunday throughout the year. I used to manage the bakery stall there around the time it was founded, in the early 80's. I got to know some of the growers and was hooked. Being there never fails to uplift my spirit. It's the third largest Farmer's Market in California. The produce and flowers are amazing. Farming is such an unpredictable and endangered profession. I am quite happy to put my dollars directly into the hands of the growers.

But back to the melon at hand. I've never used a melon as a container and am curious to see how long the flowers last. 
The water will take on the sugars and probably ferment? So after scooping it out so that it didn't list forward or back, I put a floral frog in the bottom to hold the stems in place. Too bad the melon tasted like white fibrous matter, but luckily I bought it for it's container potential. 

Here's a sequence of 3 arrangements made in that melon. It's a great exercise to make an arrangement and take it apart and remake it again and again. It's less precious and there's always a million ways to fill a melon.