Vase O' Flowers, 3 ways

 These flowers are from my garden and a minor foraging excursion around the block. I live outside our downtown area in an old Italian neighborhood. Almost all my neighbors have some form of garden or other and they don't mind a little clipping, as we trade flowers and lemons. My fairly small amount of flowers and foliage turned into another fun experiment of making an arrangement and changing it slightly. That's about it, except I've been meaning to credit my husband Jon for designing and building the often used vase pedestal/bracket. I had been wanting something small to hang on the wall specifically for vases. We use to build and sell them many years ago and I haven't seen anything like it since.  Thanks, Jonny.

Buddy, mesmerized

 I don't think it's the flowers
that have caused that look. I think there may be crows in the hood. Buddy relates to crows like no other animal. He talks crow talk to them from the window a lot. I have a fantasy that one will befriend him someday. How cool it would be to see him sitting side by side with a big black bird, cackling together. I'll keep you posted.

Ammi majus forest in Cucumber Land

 Ammi majus  sounds like some kind of Hindu mantra- Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna, Ammi majus, Ammi majus.....
This is the Latin name of the flower I've known as Queen Anne's Lace, though it's really False Queen Anne's Lace- or Bullwort, Bishop's Weed, False Bishop's Weed and on and on.

I bought a bunch the other day at the Farmer's Market and came home regretting it. I decided I did not like Ammi majus anymore. No not at all, Sam I am. It was seen through the eyes of a bored lover after the flame has fizzled. Why did I buy it?

Poor flower. Then the challenge- how can I see it with  eyes anew? It's play time.  Ammi majus is a member of the carrot family, the same as dill, cucumber's good friend in the canning world. So there's my container. A bunch of Ammi majus can look pretty chaotic  with all the branching and leaves. When I sort them out and let them show more individually,they really do look quite lovely. 
Ah, the flame rekindled.

Journey north

 

Just returned from a 10 day journey. We circled the northwest, driving from the drizzly coast to an arid, volcanic, sage filled landscape of eastern Oregon and Washington.The main purpose of our trip was to honor two men who aren't on the planet anymore; one who passed on fairly recently and another who's been gone for quite some time. We stayed and visited with 8 friends and family in three cities and sadly left each destination. Too, too little time, but rich and full.

Along the way we visited the largest family run dahlia farm in the US: http://www.dahlias.com/. 

 We ate as many blueberries and blackberries as we could possibly pick, and that big tub of blueberries lasted till we got back to the bay area. As always I was looking at local flowers and plants along the way. Chris and Deb, coming in from the mid- west brought out an old, worn photo album belonging to Jon's Grandmother Esther. While pouring through it, I felt like a traveler of a different sort- a time traveler. Here she was showing us photographs of what was important to her, even though she's been gone a long time too. Her inclusion of flowers in her photographs here and there spoke very clearly about what was dear to her and remind me that these flowers sure have been pulling on people's heartstrings for a loooong time.

Ken's tree platform above, way up in yonder trees.

Animas

These long beans feel like skin, but not human skin... I'm thinking of hippopotamus. An eggplant colored hippopotamus.

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.