As the World Turns; Happy New Year!

This wreath is inspired by the movement from winter to spring. Moving forward in hope for renewal, growth and  positive directions in 2020.

I wish you all the very best. I'm very grateful for this flower loving community and hope you will join our floral adventures in the coming year.

The late winter calendar will be coming out soon.

In a end of year blitz, I have posted photos from all the workshops from December back to late August. Enjoy!

Holiday Wreath Workshop 2019

The group was in agreement that grapevine base wreaths are a more enjoyable way to go over the immense amount of wire and time needed for a wreath built on a rigid wire base. (the jury still out for Vicki, our wreath Virgin who has not made a wire wreath).

They are simply beautiful, allowing the grapevine to play a significant role.

Dried Garlands at Serenity Farm 2019

"I made my loops too tight, I have to rip it out and start over". Kathy and  Kyra  gasped- no!
Kathy is one of my oldest and dearest California friends. Kyra, her daughter, is my god-daughter. They invited me to a blanket knitting workshop right before Christmas-  with practically a guarantee that we would walk out in three hours with a finished blanket made from yarn thick as a celery stick. Instead, I walked out with a mess of a start and 4 more skeins of yarn. I wasn't discouraged as I knew what to do in the next round. Mid- workshop I realized I had been making my stitches too tight, so I took my blanket apart. Then I worked too fast, sort of trying to catch up, made mistakes in hurrying and knew I had to take it apart yet again.

Part of the reason for my hasty work was that I had just been working on a garland prior to coming to this workshop. Geeze, for god's sake, here I was again, bending over a project in another medium, trying to get the right tension and finding a rhythm right so that all your materials create a row about the same thickness -  It's second nature now in garland making, but not in the medium of yarn. What I should have done was to put my feet up and watch my friends fly through the creation of their cozy blankets and work on mine later when I was fresh. I had to laugh. If you have taken my workshops you know that the my mantra is deconstruct and reconstruct when needed. Bingo.

And a long Segway to introduce our second year at Serenity Farms. This time we used their amazing inventory of dried flowers to make garlands instead of wreaths. Wiring, like knitting is not always easy. The results were beautiful, though difficult to capture without a wide angle lens.

 

Celebration of Fall 2019

Celebration of Fall. In this workshop we used yet another support system for keeping flowers in place when working low and lush. It was a challenge, likely the most challenging of all workshops, due to the amount of flowers used. How to make a composition dense yet with movement, with a few varieties of flowers or many. What to do in the middle? And fruit, what about adding fruit?

All worthy composition problems in the study of floral design. Beautiful!

Aztec Dahlias:Two Workshops: Casual & Composed and Windowbox Arrangements August/September 2019

A return from England to a busy fall put me behind in term of editing and loading photos of your beautiful arrangements taken in the workshops.

Catching up now and must say it is a wonderful opportunity to review these lovely pieces- made just 5 short months ago!

Enjoy the memory of late summer again. I was out cleaning up the garden yesterday and noticed shoots from snowdrop bulbs poking up among the decaying leaves. Spring is not very far away here in California. But not yet. The wait makes the abundance to come all the more sweet.

These photos are work from Casual/ Yet Composed and the Window Box Workshop from Aztec Dahlias taken two weeks apart.

Casual,yet Composed

From my journal back in early September after the Window Box Workshop:

2:00pm on a hot September afternoon in the fields at Aztec Dahlias Flower Farm during clean-up, post workshop

This morning,shortly after dawn, I walked the fields, chilled despite my down jacket, choosing what to cut for the workshop today. I was just a smidge annoyed as a team of people walked up and down the rows spraying the plants with a non-toxic remedy for those green beetles that are kissing cousin to ladybug. I do prefer be to Alone with the flowers at the farm pre- workshop. Its a short time of peace and appreciation before the hectic day.  
But the bugs must go. Oh well!

The flowers have been unusually prolific this year. In the morning light I admire the coveted Cafe'O Laits flowering so profusely that it appeared to be no space between the flower heads from plant to plant- just long, undulating rows of cream/blush ruffles.

Now, hours later, the sun is hot and strong. The daily afternoon wind is blowing through the fields. The Cafe's now look like wilted mop heads. It's somewhat alarming, knowing that these flowers are product to be sold and need to be converted into dollars. But returning to the fields over and over the past 4 years, I know that they will perk back up in the evening. The water stored the roots during the heat of the day travels back up into the flower heads when the temperature and light drop. Perhaps these rather harsh conditions of heat and wind, combined with enriched soil and just the right amount of water actually make the plants and thus flowers, stronger. It is an awesome dynamic  of nature playing out in this flowering field.

Now to-
Windowbox Arrangements:

This is the first year I've offered this workshop and I think we all agreed that it is a keeper! The results are beautiful and the boxes offer so much flexibility from season to season.
 

Daily Vase 2019!

It has been long enough since the workshop that all these pieces look new to me. I look at flowers in the studio everyday, flowers onscreen, flowers in books, flower in my head.... so forgive my forgetting.

But as I review them, I think "Wow, what a strong group!". I hope you feel the same way, now that your lovelies are a distant memory. And I hope you have continued to create with flowers in this every day way.

Daily Vase Archives

 

Just a few from the past featuring yellow and orange flowers in teapots.

 

Please check out the beautiful pieces created in our Color Study Series:  1.Yellow and Orange

First up: #1. YellowandOrange

Nothing like a hot summer afternoon to set the mood to share the sunny colors used in our first Color Theory Series Workshop:

#1. YellowandOrange. 

This awesome group of arrangements shows the variations possible using the warmest colors in the color wheel. These are analogous colors (fancy name for side by side neighbors on the color wheel). 

What a fun group! Where did the time go??

I received an email from Pottery Barn this week issuing a decree that yellow is the trend color of fall. It was also the trend color of  spring 2019, in case you missed the memo. I did!

In the spring the yellow hues were pure and saturated. The fall brings a palette of light yellows tinted with white or brown. You can see examples of both spring and fall Yellow and Oranges in this beautiful work, but the seasonal flowers tell us that it is SUMMER.

 

 

How to Make Store Bought Bouquets Look Great! 2019

Let me introduce some fine work by 3 people new to the workshops. Lovely!

Garden Valley Ranch Rose Workshop 2019

Can you tell how hot it was this day? This workshop was cancelled a number of weeks back due to the heavy rains. Now we were cooking- but only in an energetic/creative  state as the historic carriage house stayed blessedly cool in that blistering heatwave.

Enjoy the beautiful pieces here: