Thanksgiving

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

Coming out

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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.