A Gourd Palace

An old friend from Baltimore just left after visiting with us for a week, Doug Retzler.
http://www.artandeffects.com/

We both attended a private Fine Arts College in Baltimore now called MICA. What do people do with a Fine Arts Education? Mine traversed from photography to illustration, to flowers to many, many years of painting, and back to flowers (the constant was nature and flowers as subject matter).

Doug went from still photography to working on special effects in film (creating rain, wind, fog.... etc.-  no blowing things up, thank you) and creating large scale art events that everyone can participate in.  His intention and hope is to empower people to make art and to educate them on environmental and cultural topics while having fun. 

Baltimore is not Berkeley on the  
Green Richter Scale and his work is especially relevant there. He especially likes to work with kids who have not been given a lot of opportunities to make art or know where a tomato comes from or who can't wrap their minds around the fact that parks belong to them.

Here's an example of one of my favorite projects, THE GOURD PALACE.

 

Doug finds the site and community/school to work with. He designs the structure and builds it with with some helpers out of bamboo, reinforced with rebar (all this plant material is heavy). The participants learn about the ancient culture of growing gourds, then plant a bunch of varieties from seed. When they big enough, they transplant them to the base of the Gourd Palace.

 

 When the vines take off and grow they need training up the palace walls.

Here's the Palace all grow in. I'm admonishing Doug to get some better photos on his site. These are truly magical, fantastic structures.

The Flower and the Vase

I'm really excited to be adding a new class this fall called The Daily Vase. This is the way flowers happen in my house; small little vignettes creep into every room taking up all the spare surfaces. Why make one large arrangement when you can make 5 out of one purchased bouquet and have flowers everywhere! Half the time I'm just going out in the garden and finding something. It's amazing how even the most common weed is elevated by being in a vase.


I have to confess that the reason these little arrangements are so much fun is the opportunity to pair the flowers with different vases. It's a fun kind of creative play to  find an interesting vase and then try to figure out which flowers look good in it- about the same as buying an new skirt or pair of pants-right? These quirky patterned ones are my favorites.

The Daily Vase
College of Marin
Saturday, October 17, 10-12 PM

$79. http://marincommunityed.augusoft.net/
Look under Home and Garden

Yin and Yang

This isn't the big wedding coming up with many moving parts that involves a lots of nail biting concerns. I woke up this morning thinking about how floral design is a little bit like farming; there is unpredictability using plants for food or beauty that are completely dependent on weather. For designers, we don't know if certain seasonal flowers we want to use will be in right stage of bloom when we need them. We can be coaxing something to open, trying to hold it back from opening too soon, or watch the bloom time sail by with no substitute in sight. Our concerns pale in comparison to farmers, though. They're my rock stars. They're actually feeding us and so much is out of their control. Our concerns pale in comparison, though I will humbly submit that flowers are food for the soul.

This is a little wedding I participated in earlier this summer. It was so easy, the bride picked out and bought all her flowers, there were a lot of DIY components, lots of help. Truly, I got to do all the fun stuff and use the inevitable leftovers to make a few more big bouquets.This can be such a stressful business; special days like this are so appreciated.

Summertime

Getting ready for a big wedding that I'm working on with Max Lampert, my dear friend and design cohort. We are traveling the bay area, sourcing the best flowers and plants. The great San Francisco Flower Mart will be the primary source for flowers. But after you've been to the Mart time after time (and you're not completely overwhelmed) your tastes refine and you become- well, a flower snob; a stealthy sleuth, hunting out the best, the wildest, the most amazing... 

This photo is an ode to the blue trumpet vine I ripped out this year. It was growing up into my venerable quince bush. For years I managed the vine by cutting it back every winter when the quince lost it's leaves- which meant pretty make climbing into the thorny quince and untwining and extracting the trumpet vines back to the ground, only to have the vines roots install themselves more deeply amongst the quince. I'm not even going to mention that it also had a jasmine vine entrenched too. Whoops.

Finally a decision had to be made; the vines were choking the quince, sucking the life out of it. Nature, survival of the fittest. What did I want? A large dead shrub with two vines duking it out? It could have gone that way.  So this spring, armed with poison and a paint brush, I systematically painted every vine leaf I could get a hold of so the poison would kill the vines without harming the quince. Now, no more trumpet and jasmine vines. The quince is slowly recovering. I really miss that blue trumpet vine. The jasmine never really flowered, so it was easier to let go of. But the bank of blue flowers every summer. Oh my... If I can figure out a place in the garden for another to go wild and free, the Blue Trumpet will ride again.

 

Store Bought Bouquets Class rides again

I love teaching this basics class and watching women (come on men!) who have been playing with flowers all along, connect more dots.

From the recent summer sized class. Thanks Stephanie, Martha and Cynthia. You were so receptive and look forward to working with you again. Each of you took it to the next level!

The Green, Green Grass of Home

After a thirteen years gap, I'm just returning from an epic journey back east involving 3 states, 29 family and friends, one feisty little dog and a mandolin orchestra. Still living in the memory of all those wonderful conversations and experiences layered over every day- get back to business. 

As the plane approached the airport in Maryland, I saw it- green everywhere. A lush green carpet below. Coming from the full on drought here in California, it was a startling contrast, but I guess that's one of the reasons why we sit on planes for hours. For differences. 

Summer in Maryland means taking care of lawns; big expansive, lush lawns spreading out. The convention is that they are unfenced (mostly) so one property melts into another with the houses doting here and there. It's a particular kind of chore/obsession- really, as keeping a lawn is a commitment of once a week mowing for at least 3 months, aside from weeding and fertilizing. The sound of summer is the sound of lawn mowers buzzing in the background. I know I'm back in the land where I was born.

 
 Ode to green. 

 

New Jersey is called the Garden State for a reason. When one travels out of the congested corridor that funnels commuters north/south, there is a lot of produce to be found. We were too early for the corn and tomatoes, but hit the beginning of blueberry season. With all the moisture back east, I wonder if more produce will come out of this area. 

  

On my list of to-do things in Brooklyn, I wanted to pay a visit to that renowned little flower shop that in my humble estimation does some of the best floral design work in the country. Despite Saipua being on Google Maps, they don't have a sign, and don't stick to the hours listed on their website. Alas, no one was home.

Is this the ugliest style vase in the world?

     
And on a lighter note- one of those posts that lingered in my drafts folder.

 I saw this style vase a few years back on another floral blog and  thought it was  a one off. My mind conjured  a vision of someone sitting in their potter's studio playing around with clay, squeezing the clay around one finger, than the next, the next.... Remove and squeeze together. . Make a little base so that it stands up. Wa La! The finger vase is born. Maybe giggle. Play is the mother of invention, but to be honest, I thought it was  really awkward looking. There couldn't be more than one of those in the world??

A few weeks back I was at an estate sale, like one of the best sales I've ever stumbled upon; appreciating antiques, art and things well made. There, I found a variation on that odd little vase and began digging around online. Had I had been a time traveler, or just more hip and current on all trends, I would have known right away that the little finger style- multi- finger vase had many brothers and sisters. It is a style of vase that has slipped in and out of favor, at least since the Tulip Wars beginning in the 16th century corvallistoday.com/Europe/dutch_belgium/bruegelboys.htm. These finger vases conveniently offer a  designated parking space for individual flowers and in the case of certain Dutch versions, called the Tulipiere, a place for bulbs. 

So here's the one I found and have been playing around with. It would have been easy to obscure the tubes with plant matter, but I wanted to keep them visible.

Here we go again

I have so many journal entries secreted away in my drafts folder, all unfinished. When was the last time I was in this place? Five and a half years ago. A friend of ours passed away. Life felt felt so raw, so very raw. There was no solace. I happened upon this new world of amazing flower artists/ designers shared through their blogs and got sucked in badly. Badly to the point of leaving the painters block behind and jumping back into the flower world.

Now another friend, another diagnosis. I understand the incantations and affirmations. I understand the deal making, the seduction of the doctors and nurses so that they will please, please take good care. But I can't know their pain and fear of these dear ones and the journey, for now anyway.

  Now I think of a woman I'm working with to procure flowers for her DIY wedding. She wants 50 bunches of a scented flower that is nearly out of season. She wants to use this fragile flower tied in bunches on her Chuppah with no water tubes to provide moisture to the flowers. This flower is so fragile it very likely will be wilted when she walks up the aisle, but she doesn't care despite my many cautions. She keeps saying  "it doesn't matter if they're wilted, it doesn't matter if they're wilted". It makes me crazy- should I protect her from herself? How can I be so irresponsible? As she has not shared her reasoning to me, I'm making my own stab at it this evening.  All cut flowers are in the process of dying. Maybe she want to be engulfed in the massive scent of these flowers just once and that's enough. Maybe it doesn't matter past that moment. And when this  bride walks down to the aisle to her possibly wilted flowers and husband to be, there will be full acknowledgement of the ephemeral quality of life.

Life is at the same time so precious and good and I'm so very lucky. And so I'll keep bringing you flowers and together we can make our way through.

A beautiful demise

The color drains from their faces as the peonies fade, fade, fade. 

For all the Beatiful Mommas

And for my Mom, Jean Genvieve and Jon's Mom and my dear friend, Maggie. When you went away it was like been cast adrift at sea for a long, long while. I really miss you both.

For all you gals who still have Mommas; grab hold of them and love them up while you can!