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.

Two bowls and a cup

Besides vases I collect random bowls and cups.

And words: in this case the words container and vessel.

Right now I can't articulate how savoring words relates to designing,but somehow they matter, like weird little mantras.

 

  

                  

A lot vs a little

What I love about floral design is that there are so many roads to take when you have fist full of flowers to play with.

The flowers needn't be very expensive. You can take the design concepts of a more traditional arrangement and mix bits from your garden or the roadside with store-bought, as in the first one. When we open our eyes and minds to including what's growing around us, it's a big wide world out there.

This makes me laugh because while my husband might do a double-take when an attractive woman walks by, I'm more likely to do a double take when I see some floral something that's caught my fancy (unless he's really cute...).

The first bouquet was inspired by the stem of the sunflower, of all things. I loved the pale, lime green and wanted it to show, though most "design rules" may have suggested that I cover it up, not leave it sticking straight up. But as this blog shows my experiments in my floral "laboratory"( as in "la-BORE- atory"), I can investigate, try out ideas and have permission to make things look really ugly, so that they might eventually look more beautiful.

The second one is that five minute kind of arrangement. I don't even know what to call these: contemporary, rustic, messy? These are the ones where I could put more in, but often stop so that just the bare bones show and each element looks important.

A little behind

You might be able to tell that this photo is out of date. We've long bypassed these hellebores and spring branches. Just checking in. I've been remiss. And it's not as though I haven't had some seriously beautiful flowers around. TraderJoes had some amazing peonies a few weeks back from Half Moon Bay, brought out of deep refrigeration (peonies can be held in refrigeration to delay bloom time). The very first bunch I bought turned from magenta to yellow to antique white. I've never had a flower change color like that while maintaining it's shape. They were spectacular. I kept buying more bunches of them in other colors but none performed that transformation. But for weeks I was engulfed in the subtle scent of peonies. 

Breathless Spring

Breathless Spring" is a phrase that pops into my head every year this time. All surrounded by flowers coming in and out of bloom really fast after the winter hellebore: magnolia, plum and cherry blossoms, zoom, zoom, wild radish, ceanothus, azaleas, wisteria, wild geranium, zoom, cymbidium, callas, that flowering onion........ 

It's crazy! But yet, but yet-
It's the delicate spring green that first appears on foliage and tender leaves that leaves me chanting "breathless spring....breathless spring.....So fragile and ephemeral. It's a quality of delicacy that just can't possibly last.

This much sour grass

The dark days of winter are the best for being in my equally dark studio, making paintings. I like hunkering down and going inward. It's harder to paint when everything is growing and blooming outside.

The sour grass pictured has taken over my yard, despite all my efforts for it to go away 
(Dictator Proclamation -Take 132!) It's inspired me to hunt for some weed enlightenment...  
I've found it in a book called "Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants". 

It's a fascinating survey of the perception of the unwanted plants through British history with a nod to American soil as weeds migrated west with colonization. It appears that the dilemma of wanted/unwanted plants arose with farming. Nice loose, cultivated soil attracts certain tenacious plants. So this differentiation of wanted/unwanted plants has been going on for decades and guess what? They're here to stay.

 On the flip side the author talks about the idea of a weed being a nostalgic and perhaps useful constant. Weeds have been growing in areas for decades. Some of these seeds simply lie dormant waiting for the right conditions to grow again. They are survivors and adapters.

So, to try to get friendly with the idea of thinking about weeds in a different way, I took some shots of sour grass though the color unnerves me, I have to say. It should glow in the dark. And speaking of dark, here's Buddy.

Winter White Wonderland

 

Around the holidays there are a lot of white flowers for sale. The choice generally runs between ho!ho!ho! red or white. Not an ivory white, not a creamy white, but the brightest, coolest of whites. A white that's bracing and clean, like snow. Or a bright punctuation in the short days of winter, a floral equivalent of twinkle lights.

The camellias and little red tomatoes came in from my garden. Camellias usually last one day before their edges turn brown. If you strip all the leaves they last longer without browning, but they are so very delicate. And tomatoes ripe for Christmas is a first. The shape of Christmas future?

Goodbye leaves

  
    In the world of fashion, there was a rule that was followed very faithfully by the girls in my family when I was growing up; do not wear white- shoesjackethandbag- etc. past Labor Day. 

Similarly, in the world of floral imagery you are not supposed to see fall leaves past Thanksgiving. So this is my last chance to share these photos from a commemorative celebration without offending any subconscious sense of what feels right in the world. This rule makes more sense to me than the white shoes tradition since it acknowledges the seasons. Though in our neck of the woods the fall leaves are still around until spring starts it's regrowth. It took this east coaster a long time before I could wrap my mind around that one.

A beautiful chaos

   This arrangement feels a little like the inside of my head and heart today; mixed up, but trying to find the mark.  There is so much at stake these days. I ponder the hopscotching of big storms from Katrina to Sandy and worry about our fate here on the west coast. 

Contrast that with a bucolic warm weekend surrounded by music, good food, and good fellowship at a friends ranch in the Sierra foothills this weekend. 

These days I take some comfort in Buddhist philosophy that teaches that the nature of this is world has always been chaotic. That chaos is the nature of life here from birth to death. We have to find the island within ourselves and to work outwardly, sharing what we have to offer. I'm searching very hard today. 

The grapevines  and pine needles came from Tom and Gayle's ranch. Thanks you two!
                    VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

Ghost of fall past, fall present