Why I Oughta...

'Tis the season for winter, evergreen mixed arrangements around here.  I've made a couple of 'big' ones that ended up at each of our folks houses and some that ended up at neighbor's houses.  A few day ago, I posted a pair that went to my sister's houses .  And, back close to Thanksgiving, I posted a photo of the first one that I put together for our own kitchen counter .   A couple weeks later, that initial one needed a refresh, so I pulled it apart.  And, Nat found this little vintage planter with a wreath on the front that I filled with some floral foam and stuck various evergreen branches to make this arrangement you see below: This has Thuja, pine, fir, boxwood, Alder and painted Birch branches.  

Last year, I made my first few Winter arrangements featuring a mix of foraged materials and some store-bought highlights.  Last year, I leaned heavily on evergreens and ecualyptus with the only pops of color coming from either red Dogwood branches or crabapples that I foraged from parking lot trees. Here's the first one I made last year in a vintage Santa ceramic pot .  And, here's what I called V2 - that was more upright and I put together in a Goodwill thrifted vase .  I used some foraged curly Willow branches to give that one A LOT of height.    I also bleached pinecones for the first time and I liked how those turned out - the sort-of 'stood out' or had more contrast against the green needles.  And, I even started to give them away - here's one I gave to my sister .   With all of the dahlia arrangements that I worked on this Summer, I felt emboldened to go a little bit further with my 2024 Winter (evergreen) arrangements.   Last yea...

Our dahlias keep blooming, but this week, we'll see overnight temperatures down into the 40's.  I'm thinking that means that these things will SLOW WAY DOWN and the blooms will be coming to an end.  Here, below are a couple of photos showing some of the dahlias that I cut this morning - Melina Fleur, Cornell Bronze, Orange Nugget.  

Last week, I showed a couple of countertop arrangements featuring some Zinnias and Dahlias.  Well...we're in the THICK of dahlia bloom season.  Looking back at my 2024 to-do list , #2 on the list was to 'add more flowers' and get past my discomfort with blooms.  And #17 was to 'do more/different arrangements'.  While, these monoculture dahlia arrangements aren't *different*, they're certainly checking the box on MORE.  See below for two more vases 1 of Melina Fleur Decorative Dahlias and Cornell Bronze Dahlia blooms .   1. [I used the word vases, but these are pickle and pasta sauce jars.] ↩

It is peony season around here.   When we were first dating, Nat was a blogger.  Her url was iheartpeonies dot com.  The very first thing that we planted in our first garden was a Sarah Bernhardt peony that was a division from Nat's mom's garden.  The story goes that the peony was her great aunt's peony that had been divided a number of times to be planted in various family member's gardens.   That peony ended up back in Nat's Mom's garden when we moved out.  I said - back in 2017 - that it was being 'fostered' .  But, it has stayed there these seven-plus years.   Our new garden didn't have any peonies.  Until 2018 when I bought a couple of tubers.  The first one was Sarah Bernhardt .  The pink peony that you think of when you think of peonies.  It has moved around a few times, but ended up IB2DWS and has grown quite a bit up there.  Last year (2023), I declared was our first REAL 'Peony Season' .  It w...

This Summer, I started to experiment with making my first few arrangements.  They were full of Disneyland Roses, Zinnias and whatever I could snip out of the garden .  I had a lot of fun experimenting with those countertop arrangements the last month-or-so of the growing season and is something that I'm already thinking about for 2024.   With Winter here and everything dormant, I recently opted to try my hand at a winter greenery arrangement for the kitchen.  We had this Santa Claus Holt Howard planter on hand, so I grabbed it and started planning.  See below for the Santa planter: One of the things that I learned this Summer was to try to use a grid in wider-mouth vases and planters to create some structure that the stems can be supported by instead of just being jammed into the mouth together.  I grabbed some of this green hardware cloth and cut a small section.  Below you can see it inserted in the back of the planter: From there, I cut up some...

I've cut and brought inside flowers from time-to-time.  Disneyland Roses.  Hydrangeas.  Even Zinnias and Peonies.  Last month, I cut three things:  Zinnias, Floribunda Roses and Anemones and combine.  them . That was my first real attempt at mixing things.  But, I've haven't - until now - tried to bring in a variety of flowers AND foliage (and even seed heads) while attempting to make an arrangement that would sit on our kitchen counter.  Here's my first attempt - featuring only things from our garden beds:  Everything from Euphorbia to Ferns to Hostas to Coleus to Dusty Miller to Disneyland Roses in one container.