They call it mellow yellow.....

 
 Yellow isn't a very popular color in floral design. Aside from sunny sunflowers, it's probably requested the least in weddings and event work. People like to include it, but not feature it. Why is this? Is it too aggressively cheerful? Too hard to work with, too bold? I found this vase this spring in one of our local thrift stores. I didn't buy it right away. It seemed a little strange. Now it's my current favorite vase  and is a gentle gateway to the color yellow. I love yellow. Doesn't everyone? Why don't we want to live with more yellow in our lives. Why? Why? Why? 

In casting about on the online world, color psychology is a fascinating in- depth topic.  After looking at a couple dozen of sites, the consensus was that yellow was perceived as universally cheerful, but too stimulating- that is, if the hue is bright and bold and used in large quantities. Essentially we use bright yellow flowers the way we use yellow signage; that bright pop to get one's attention. Interestingly, before doing any of this color research, I took this photo of lemony sunflowers and softened the color in Photoshop to tone it down a bit.

   

Forever yours

Sometimes I feel guilty for getting to work to with flowers and not in more direct service to people. It's an incredible amount of work, but to get to create with flowers and be surrounded with all that beauty and energy is an amazing privilege. I've been pulled away from years of painting, in part feeling that real flowers heal and uplift in a more immediate, intimate way. They mark all our significant life passages; in sickness and in health- birth, graduation, marriage,and death. Wired in our DNA, flower love seems part of the human experience. They nourish body, mind, and spirit.

This weekend I got a call from a woman living out of state requesting a bouquet for her friend who had suffered an almost unspeakable loss over 30 years ago. They acknowledged their friendship and this loss every year. Oh my... When I delivered the flowers to her friend she began to cry, I began to cry and we hugged one another and talked. It was an honor to be allowed into that space for a short while. In that moment, doing flowers and being of service came together very meaningfully.

The Flower and the Vase

7petals Nicasio Wedding

My body felt like it had been through a spin cycle of a washing machine. Every muscle ached. I was moving through a fog of - that weird fatigue that leaves you both hyper and exhausted.

The big wedding was over and Max and I were in the home stretch, called "a strike" where everything gets taken apart and packed up. The remains were sorted and   the vehicles were full. I started to pull out and head home. A powerful scent wafting from the backseat made me stop and turn my creaky body around. Some amazing fully blown garden roses sat in a bucket in the back seat perfuming the air. Leftovers from the wedding, the spoils we got to bring home and enjoy another day or two.

The roses were so beautiful. Damn! I'm such a sucker for flowers.

This is the largest event that I've been responsible for to date, together with Max Lampert (my designer co-hort). It necessitated several vans and a crew to pull it off. The venue was a rustic roadhouse in Nicascio, CA. with many little areas around the large property to dress up. The wedding family wanted a more sophisticated but still rustic feel. I had worked with Max (Staging to the Max), staging the bride's mother's home years ago and they expressed complete faith in what we were going to do. Wow. It makes such a difference in having appreciative and grateful recipients.

I didn't have a chance to take any photos from this wedding. Jon is learning my camera and he realized that I would be too busy, so he kindly (what a guy) offered to come shoot some pictures until the professional photographs are available. And also thanks to Dana, Max's partner who carved out time to put his talents to task, Suzanne Shellhart for the addition of some key garden flowers, and our crew, Carol,  Cooper, Nancy, Carol K, and Sandy. And a special thanks to Julie, the chef and total mastermind behind Rancho's special events and her staff. There a a lot of loving hands behind these events.

Here's a few photos Jon took. I will be sharing the professional ones later.

This is a practice run for a vignette we are setting in the the entry 

 Installing the vignette

 

  

 

 

 

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.