The Flower and the Vase

I'm really excited to be adding a new class this fall called The Daily Vase. This is the way flowers happen in my house; small little vignettes creep into every room taking up all the spare surfaces. Why make one large arrangement when you can make 5 out of one purchased bouquet and have flowers everywhere! Half the time I'm just going out in the garden and finding something. It's amazing how even the most common weed is elevated by being in a vase.


I have to confess that the reason these little arrangements are so much fun is the opportunity to pair the flowers with different vases. It's a fun kind of creative play to  find an interesting vase and then try to figure out which flowers look good in it- about the same as buying an new skirt or pair of pants-right? These quirky patterned ones are my favorites.

The Daily Vase
College of Marin
Saturday, October 17, 10-12 PM

$79. http://marincommunityed.augusoft.net/
Look under Home and Garden

Yin and Yang

This isn't the big wedding coming up with many moving parts that involves a lots of nail biting concerns. I woke up this morning thinking about how floral design is a little bit like farming; there is unpredictability using plants for food or beauty that are completely dependent on weather. For designers, we don't know if certain seasonal flowers we want to use will be in right stage of bloom when we need them. We can be coaxing something to open, trying to hold it back from opening too soon, or watch the bloom time sail by with no substitute in sight. Our concerns pale in comparison to farmers, though. They're my rock stars. They're actually feeding us and so much is out of their control. Our concerns pale in comparison, though I will humbly submit that flowers are food for the soul.

This is a little wedding I participated in earlier this summer. It was so easy, the bride picked out and bought all her flowers, there were a lot of DIY components, lots of help. Truly, I got to do all the fun stuff and use the inevitable leftovers to make a few more big bouquets.This can be such a stressful business; special days like this are so appreciated.

Summertime

Getting ready for a big wedding that I'm working on with Max Lampert, my dear friend and design cohort. We are traveling the bay area, sourcing the best flowers and plants. The great San Francisco Flower Mart will be the primary source for flowers. But after you've been to the Mart time after time (and you're not completely overwhelmed) your tastes refine and you become- well, a flower snob; a stealthy sleuth, hunting out the best, the wildest, the most amazing... 

This photo is an ode to the blue trumpet vine I ripped out this year. It was growing up into my venerable quince bush. For years I managed the vine by cutting it back every winter when the quince lost it's leaves- which meant pretty make climbing into the thorny quince and untwining and extracting the trumpet vines back to the ground, only to have the vines roots install themselves more deeply amongst the quince. I'm not even going to mention that it also had a jasmine vine entrenched too. Whoops.

Finally a decision had to be made; the vines were choking the quince, sucking the life out of it. Nature, survival of the fittest. What did I want? A large dead shrub with two vines duking it out? It could have gone that way.  So this spring, armed with poison and a paint brush, I systematically painted every vine leaf I could get a hold of so the poison would kill the vines without harming the quince. Now, no more trumpet and jasmine vines. The quince is slowly recovering. I really miss that blue trumpet vine. The jasmine never really flowered, so it was easier to let go of. But the bank of blue flowers every summer. Oh my... If I can figure out a place in the garden for another to go wild and free, the Blue Trumpet will ride again.