And no carnations or daisies, please....

A story about paying attention:
Years ago, when my much beloved mother-in- law, Maggie was alive, I would send her flowers for special occasions. At that time she lived in Colorado and we lived in California.
Maggie had been a Stanford Home Coming Queen and was a lady of much sophistication. She was artistic, funny, and had a huge diversity of friends from all political leanings. I always wanted to please her as she treated me like a fellow queen. Whenever I would order flowers for her, it was always something exotic like orchids or some other little delicacy. And at the end of the long distance phone conversation with the Colorado florist, I would always request; no carnations or daisies, please. In my mind they were so....common- not like Maggie.

When Maggie passed I had the opportunity to view her entire jewelry collection which was immense and eclectic, as her tastes ranged from the traditional to very contemporary. I saw many pieces that incorporated daisies. When I asked her best friend about  it, she said that daises were Maggie's favorite flower. Damn! When we would visit her home I remembered seeing the ubiquitous daisy/ carnation combo and just chalked it up to...what? Obviously she bought them because she liked them. It was a real eye opener. It was me that didn't like daisies or carnations! I was so prejudiced that I couldn't see that she had an obvious preference in flowers (though I know she enjoyed the orchids too). After that I  try to keep my eyes open more to what pleases someone else without the filter of my tastes -- and to give those "common", oft used flowers a second chance.

Investigating pave's (flower carpets)

Pave'

1. (Engineering / Civil Engineering) a paved surface, especially an uneven one

2. (Clothing, Personal Arts & Crafts / Jewellery) a style of setting gems so closely that no metal shows.

Generally this is seen as plants used on a vertical surface, as seen above. The florist who has done some amazing work in this area lives in Barcelona. Check out flowersbybornay.blogspot.com/

Thanksgiving

 For you and yours. Top one by me, bottom one created by Max

Coming out

Add caption

Making one's way as a free lance floral designer, not ready for a brick and mortar store front is challenging because you want people to know you're here. My avenue of entry is the  Larkspur Farmer's Market on Saturday. It is a small but spirited market in a very beautiful location. My stall location has my back to Mt. Tam, but I turn around and yep, it's right there, hasn't moved. I'm testing the waters with different ideas as to what to sell, how to make a go of it.
In the market picture, two of the arrangements were made by  Max Lampert. We've worked together for 11 years in her home staging business and have made hundreds of arrangements of the living and faux persuasion.. Together we give each other permission to push the edge with flowers, and what defines an "arrangement". Our belief is that anything is a candidate for exploration. Included in the market picture is a squash arrangement.And the idea for the arrangements in the ball jars is credited to the Monkey Flower Group in Sonoma.

Version 2 / Yellow wax bean

 

Untitled as of yet. Here's a link to my artwork:

maryannnardo.com

Fall: is a continuous arrangement

                                            I'm always shocked when fall arrives. 
I swear. Every year I'm flabbergasted and pissed off that the days shorten. I think it's because we have very half hearted summers in the Bay Area and don't really get heat until September. Then the vegetables really start producing and -boom it's fall.  If it weren't for the total seduction of fall color, I don't think I could accept that the light is going away. Which is a long way of talking about this vase of yellow wax beans and dahlias. I always seem to make an arrangement in the fall that  starts off with a very spare beginning and continues to be added to until I've made my adaption to change of season sometime round November. I didn't document the completion of the top feathery down below from last year. Now I'll try and document the progression of the yellow wax bean one because it's changed quite a bit since this photo. 

End of summer. They just don't get any riper than this.

Skin of leek, excretment of snail......

In my world, I don't always go for the pretties of the flower kingdom.  I was completely taken by the little tissue caps that split off to reveal the flower of the leek plant. As they dried I put them in the bottom part of an old silver salt shaker. When did the snail show up? There is something about the tarnished silver and brown transparent tissue of the leek "caps" that is very appealing and I have kept these caps all summer. Need to take some better photos before letting them go.

Some small sweet thing w/rock

Buddies

Summer

The return of the dahlias. And an unexpected surprise when a zucchini clipping bore a blossom in the vase. You can almost feel the determination of plants to birth out their fruits this time of year.

Happy Mother's Day

 What eggzactly?  Continuing on an ovoid theme, I guess.

  The Hellebore are in bloom again, here in one of my favorite containers.

Annual vine pulling contest:
The quince bush before the vine extrication. It's really pretty looking with all the draped vines...... but there should be no leaves and only brown branches filled with salmon colored flowers.

This was one of those days, you know, when you're just merely walking by the  garden and somehow three hours later you realize that it happened again.  I love to work in the garden. Today I had a lot of confused feelings. Usually my mind  is gratefully empty, but today I had the task of the annual vine pulling off the quince bush. Come end of the summer, artfully intertwined in this beautiful shrub are the also picturesque morning glory vine, jasmine vine, trumpet vine, and ficus vine( yeah, guilty for planting two of these close by). Come spring, the quince bears beautiful flowers. But you can't see the flowers for the vines. If I didn't pull the vines off each year, the quince would be eventually smothered/ killed by the vines. What's going to  happen eventually when I'm not here to take care of it? The vines will do battle and the most vigorous will win maybe living on the skeleton of a dead quince bush?  Last year I did an especially good job of trimming back and uprooting the vines  and they rewarded me this year with even more verdant growth and I was pissed! Then I thought, well who are you to call the shots- just the resident garden dictator. Here just for a short regime. I don't know.  Could it be that men make wars and women make gardens?

 

But the site of the pea growing down into the cabbage leaf was balm for my monkey mind. Still vine pulling...

Just prior to December 25.

New Monarch painting on douglas fir panel in watercolor. This is an older series that shows the life cycle of local butterflies. I'm adding to the series again. I have a show at Crome Architecture now and another solo show at the Marin Headlands Visitor Center this summer.

 

Buddy  

It's been too long. i had an art show and then that brief, intense, dream time we call Christmas took over completely. And then it was gone. Here in California we still have trees that are trying to lose their leaves and the hellebore have started blooming.

These flowers were made for the fall memorial service of Henry Dakin, a rare individual I had the pleasure knowing for awhile; a tie that  continues  through his dear family. He was a beloved father, husband, philanthropist and seeker. An interesting thing happened in that three of the vases that were used in the service broke/shattered on different days after the service. That's never happened. No one was hurt. It does bring up the question of energy and it's transference around the passing of a human being.

T

Took a few shots before loading them into the van.