Why I Oughta...

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...

The small, linear bed that is up against the foundation of our garage received some attention last year with the planting of three 1# Green Velvet boxwoods  and  a pair of Kousa Dogwoods that I'm going to espalier against the house.  This bed has been home to a bunch of orphans - including some Ostrich Ferns, hostas and the various Coral Bells that I've planted in containers and transplanted into this bed at the end of the growing season.  ( Note to self:  lay off Heucheras going forward, they just don't perform that well for me .) Historically, this has been a VERY informal bed, but my goal with the boxwoods were to add a little bit of structure, winter interest and formality to the garden.  This is 'on the way' to our backyard, so is viewed by anyone who 'comes back' via the gravel pathway. In the photo below, you can see the boxwood evergreen shrub that has managed the winter just fine, but you'll also note a clump of moss that we stuck into the soil...

On my winter evergreen arrangement-making journey this year, I also added a new side-project:  bleaching pinecones.  I've shown a few of my arrangements - including the original and some V2's and all of them featured a number of foraged pinecones.  Some of them were on the tips of the pine branches and others were tucked in with a piece of wire.   When we were last up in Wisconsin, I picked up a few pinecones that were on the driveway.  They were dropped by the upright pine trees.  Here's what they look like pre-bleaching: One-way-or-the-other, I came across the idea of bleaching pinecones as a winter project.  There are dozens of how-to articles like this one that show you the very simple process:  find acorns, put them in a bowl that contains a water and bleach mixture, and weigh them down so they don't float.   That's what I did:  I tucked two into a bleach and water bath overnight.  15-or-so hours later, I pulled th...

A few days ago, I shared a photo of what I'm calling V2 of my Winter Arrangements for 2023 .  The first one - where I learned a bit - was in the Santa planter .  V2 is a series of four in various vases from GoodWill that I picked up over the weekend.   Below is a photo the second of the four in the V2 Series that we gave to my Sister (Equation Boy/Man's wife).  This one (as the title of the post suggests) is a bit more wild (I'm not sure that's the right word, but it is the one I'm using...for now) and has no color in it aside from green.  Just like the others, this one is foraged but for the eucalyptus.  Has a couple of large pine branches that have some cones on them and a big bolt of juniper that is covered in berries.  This one lacks the crabapple branch(s) and has more eucalyptus and curly will branches.  This vase is a bit shorter and has a wider mouth, so the arrangement is wider with the branches splaying out the sides.  There ar...

Yesterday, I posted a couple of photos of my first winter (evergreen) arrangement that I put together using foraged materials and a vintage Santa planter that we had on hand.  As is wont to happen around here, things took off fast and winter arrangements are my entire personality right now.  I've put together a number of them and have added an even wider array of materials - some foraged and some bought.  Below is one of these V2 winter arrangements. It features crabapple branches (for some red), eucalyptus (from TJ's), some Magnolia leaves and a number of different evergreens - pines, cedars, juniper and firs.  There's also a couple of different branches in this one - curly willow and red (might be dogwood) uprights. I made four of these (all a little bit different) and put them in vases from Goodwill.  This one is a Hoosier Glass 4090 (Green Swirl) that I was drawn to at the store on Ogden Ave.   The other ones are in reds and/or clear vases - all f...