Category Archives: flower arrangements

In a Vase on Monday – Dillicious

Dill is a cool season herb in South Florida. I usually have several plants in pots, this year I have really enjoyed the dill and there is no foliage left to eat! Long Island Mammoth Dill is my favorite variety, the current plant is producing seed heads and I have been enjoying them in flower arrangements and will save some seed for next year. I usually don’t like the seed for eating but have recently learned to make sandwich bread, so I am going to give a dill seed loaf a try. Everything else I made from this plant has been Dillicious. Including this herbal sweet scented concoction in my mother’s crystal rose bowl.

My dillicious vase this week includes:

Fireworks in this vase are from dill seed heads and flowers in chartreuse and orange tubular flowers from the Firebush (Hamelia patens)

Another delicious flower appealing to a different sense is the white Tropical Gardenia (Tabernaemontana divaricata). These flowers lend a heavenly scent to the garden at night. They are sometimes called the Pinwheel Gardenia, there is a flatter flowering variety that looks more like a pinwheel.

That’s all from SoFla this week. To traverse distant gardens and visit via vase follow this link to Cathy’s blog.

Happy Gardening.

In a Vase on Monday – Foreign Affairs

All of the plants in the vase this week are, to me, foreign versions of common plants grown further north. The pink and white flowers are Desert Roses, from the deserts of Africa and the Arabian peninsula and a succulent to boot. White and green flowers are from a tropical Begonia that shoots up flowers about three feet tall and then we have the giant Dianthus. Tropical foreigners from my garden.

Desert Roses (Adenium obesum) are a mad thing. This is a red one frying on the pavement and finding its happy place. It doesn’t look much like a typical rose bush.

The Begonia in the arrangement is Lotusleaf. Definitely the biggest Begonia I have ever seen. It is a common roadside plant in Central America and pretty indestructible once established in my garden.

A closer view.

Draping over the edge of the vase, Desert Rose (Adenium obesum); green seed heads and white, frothy flowers are from Lotusleaf Begonia (Begonia nelumbifolia); pink flowers are Giant Dianthus; chartreuse leaves are a coleus of some sort, and the deep green foliage in back is from a Lady Palm (Rhapis excelsa). The vase is a thrift store find.

We are transitioning into warmer weather here with the weather guessers trumpeting dire warnings about a violent hurricane season. After a while I realized they really have no idea.I am still planting a few new things, tempting fate!

Here’s to enjoying spring and seeing a few new vases this Monday. Follow this link to visit Cathy and see the vases in the comments section.

In a Vase on Monday – Chanel No. 4?

I decided to put together a small vase of spring flowers this week. The big surprise was the wonderful fragrance generated by a combination of four flowers I selected from the garden. Mmmm, I thought, I would wear this as perfume. This led me to a very ancient bottle of Chanel No. 5 my father gave me decades ago that lives on. My mother, in all her Greatest Generation glory, considered this her signature scent. It is a bit, sweet? for me. I can’t quite put my finger on it, though I did try to grow a Ylang Ylang tree in my garden, the main fragrance component of Chanel No. 5. The YY tree expired, but I don’t think this bottle of perfume has!

The purple flowers are Agastache, I have no idea what variety. These have a lemony scent and are doing quite well in a container. These are new to the garden. A few Genovese basil flowers and White Flame Salvia are adding their white flowers and herbal scents.

The Giant Dianthus in pinks adds a clove fragrance to the mix. It seems lemony, herbal, clove may be my signature scent! I love it. A few snips of purple and silver foliage from Inch Plant (Transcandentia zebrina) were added for color.

The blue glass container is an heirloom from a collection my in-laws had. I am not sure what it is. A giant shot glass?

Happy Spring Monday to all and thank you to Cathy for hosting IAVOM every week! Follow the link ramblinginthegarden to visit Cathy and see more vases.

In a Vase on Monday – Hip, Heirloom Hippeastrum

I found my heirloom ‘Red Lion’ Hippeastrum in flower this week. Given their inevitable association with Christmas, I tried to make a modern, hip arrangement that did not reflect the holidays. These bulbs came from my father in law, Glenn, who had an incredibly intense in and out of the closet scheduling scheme for getting the bulbs to rebloom – after a few years of holiday flowers he would plant them in the garden. These have always lived outside here and are a rare bulb that hangs around in my garden. Glenn has been gone for almost twenty years, so I wonder how old these bulbs are?!

The Hipsters:

I love a little chartreuse and grey in the garden. This is an unnamed coleus in chartreuse and what I think is a Graptosedum succulent. I am hoping the coleus will root. If you look closely the cotton ball I stuffed into the bottom of the Hippeastrum stem is visible. I did this with the flower upside down and it burped when placed in the vase. I have read that filling the stem with water and putting a cotton ball in the end will make the flower last longer. The experiment is on!

Glenn’s Red Lion Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) – I am certain he would not know what a Hippeastrum is. The chartreuse umbels are flowers from culinary dill. I like to eat the foliage, but the seeds don’t really tempt me. The green foliage is a palm seedling of some sort. There is a nice herbal scent surrounding the vase. The container is a heavy crystal vase that was a gift.

I hope everyone is enjoying spring by now and I am looking forward to watching weird shadows with the solar eclipse on Monday afternoon. Thanks to Cathy for hosting IAVOM, to see more vases follow the link ramblinginthegarden and read the comments section.

In a Vase on Monday – Eggcentric

I put this vase together on Easter Sunday, adding a crystal egg that I inherited from my mother, not quite realizing it would reflect the colors of the flowers when a sunbeam appeared. This egg adds to my surprise of finding a nest of robins eggs on Saturday, making it an Eggcentric weekend.

My vase morphed into a colored layer confection by accident, which is the usual course of events on Sunday. Here is the base layer.

In white, Lotusleaf Begonia (Begonia nelumbifolia), I like to cut these even though they shed a lot, they will produce chartreuse seedheads while in a Vase. Pink flowers are Dianthus “wedon’treallyknow”.

The top layer:

Lighter blue flowers are a hybrid Plumbago auriculata, “Imperial Blue”, I think. Blue spikes are “Mystic Blue” Salvia, these got buggy and experienced a Chelsea chop after the vase was completed. The second chop for the salvia in about six months. I am interested to see how it fares. My go to Asian Ferns complete the vase. The vase is a historic florist vase that has been hanging around the house.

That is all from springy, sunny South Florida. Visit Cathy’s blog, ramblinginthegarden to view an array of vases from gardeners around the world.

Happy Gardening!!

In a Vase on Monday – Gingerly into the Garden

I have been eyeing the Shell Ginger (Alpinia zerumbet) for at least a week, watching the buds get bigger and bigger and stubbornly not flowering. Finally, the temperature soared to 90F/32C on Saturday and evidently inspired the Shell Ginger to open up. The miniature heat wave also caused the gigantic Strangler Fig to drop its leaves, so I walked gingerly through the leaves (fall is really not a thing here and I have yet to figure out the circle of life on the leaf drop on this tree) and started to cut flowers. Then, the bottom dropped out and I was in a torrential rainfall. Likely a result of the cold front behind the heat wave. Gingers in hand, I proceeded gingerly back into the house, drenched and enjoying the fragrant bouquet.

These are such dramatic flowers, I think they are at their best simply arranged. These are in one of my old florist vases and as is with their own foliage. I trimmed a good deal of the foliage off to allow the flowers to shine. The flowers are lightly fragrant adding a subtle ginger scent to the foyer.

A close up-

The flowers always remind me of porcelain and they are quite thick. I think the trip into the garden was worthwhile. The rain cleared, the temperature dropped and it is a beautiful, blue sky day.

To see more vases, visit our hostess, Cathy at ramblinginthegarden and follow the links in the comments.

In a Vase on Monday – Tropical Spring Roll

My spring roll is filled with different ingredients than one found in a Thai restaurant. A bromeliad leaf is wrapped around delicious contents from the garden. The names of some of the contents could be considered food – asparagus (fern), sage (salvia) – but I think we would be hard pressed to chew through the roll. It could possibly be considered high fiber/low carb for oh, say rodents or a passing iguana. My plan is to admire the flowers.

The ingredients:

My salvias are having a great year. Here they are again, Mystic Blue and White Flame. The pink flower is known as the tulip of the Treasure Coast. They don’t really remind me of tulips, but I get it. They are actually bromeliads, Billbergia pyramidalis. Green foliage is Asparagus fern and the wrapping leaf is from Blanchetiana Bromeliad (Aechmea blanchetiana). I love the green/mahogany coloration of the Blanchetiana leaves in winter, they are chartreuse in summer.

The weather here has finally turned in favor of gardening. My tomatoes are ripening and spring is in the air. On the down side, the moles ate all the bulbs and tubers, making me realize I should stop wasting money on these lovelies. I also accidentally grew some rabbit tobacco I thought was Chinese Forget Me Nots, oh well. Rabbit tobacco is a weed and a rite of passage in my youth. Boys would smoke it pretending like it was cigarettes! I am told it was harsh, but I never tried it.

Thanks to Cathy for hosting this weekly meme. Follow this link to see more vases.

In a Vase on Monday – No Guts, No Glory

This Monday’s arrangement is done in primary colors as a nod to the presidential primary elections taking place in the US. All politics aside, I felt compelled to give a shout out to Nikki Haley for taking on the orange beast and standing firm in her resolve to continue her quest. No guts, no glory.

My garden is a strict no politics zone and the colors have nothing to do with anything except hopefully not clashing with one another. Although, I am questioning my own taste in the placement of hot pink flowering ice plants near almost orange flowering Ixora shrubs (they are called Maui Red, in my own defense) then there is the issue of some nearby Purple Queen groundcover plants. I suppose it is Florida, after all, so some questionable tropical color mixtures can be overlooked.

The palette:

The flower shapes reflect the spiky nature of politics. In white, Sweet Almond (Aloysia virgata) adds the sweet scent of success; in red, Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea); in blue, Mystic Spires Salvia; white daisies are Bidens alba. The green foliage spikes are a juvenile palm frond from a Cabbage Palm.

Yellow and white round out the primary color palette. In white, Sedum adolphii ‘Firestorm’, yellow daisies, Beach Sunflower (Helianthus debilis); yellow and red daisies, Gallardia pulchella; yellow bells, Tecoma stans. The cobalt blue vase was a long ago gift from my brother’s family.

This primary season should prove to be interesting, maybe not quite as interesting as the final color scheme in my garden – only time will tell. Thanks to Cathy for hosting this weekly meme, to see more vases from gardens around the work, click this link.

In a Vase on Monday – Wintry Whites

Sometimes I like a little reminder of winter, something that doesn’t involve actually being cold. With temperatures hovering around 80F/26C and the air conditioning running it is not very wintry in my garden. I decided to concentrate on frosty white flowers in a vase for this Monday.

It has been very pleasant outside this week, so I have been clearing things out and moving things around. I planted a couple of packages of seed ahead of a predicted day long deluge (Sunday) hoping to get some different cutting flowers going (Bupleurum and White Finch Orlaya). I decided to plant these in a bed instead of pots as I have this magnificent vegetable bed I prepared a couple of years ago lying fallow since it became infested with nematodes almost immediately after completion. The reseeding salvia is very happy there so I’m hoping for more flowers. Upon returning to the house I read the packages – both said they need to be chilled for two weeks prior to planting. Oops. I hope the deluge helps.

The vase is a thrift store find. Flowers in frosty tones:

White Flame Salvia is cascading over the edges. The purple stemmed fuzzy flowers are Red Velvet Aerva.

White daisies are Bidens alba. Varigated foliage is ‘Bossa Nova’ Neoregelia Bromeliad. The airy grasses are dried seedheads from Muhly Grass (Muhlbergia capillaris).

That’s all from not so wintry South Florida this Monday. Visit our hostess, Cathy, at her blog to see vases from other gardeners around the world.

In a Vase on Monday – Valentine’s Putto

Putto sounds a bit like an Italian curse for a Valentine’s vase. I decided I needed a putto for a proper holiday vase, found one after searching around the house and read up on them. Here is the scoop, naked winged male babies in art are Cupid if they have arrows, cherubs if they have religious connotations and they are all putto in the singular and putti is plural.

So, I have figured out that the putto is presiding over the Valentine’s vase. He looks a bit contemplative. The vase is another old florist’s vase (I think they are multiplying) I wrapped this one with a Blanchetiana bromeliad leaf for another touch of color.

The rest of the players:

Surrounding the putto are the foliage and flowers of Genovese Basil, my favorite. I have this year round and eat a few leaves almost every day. It needed to be cut back, so the timing was ideal and the scent is wonderful. Red and yellow flowers are ‘Lady Di’ Heliconias (Heliconia pssitacorum); red bell shaped flowers are Firecracker Plants (Russelia equisetiformis).

The back of the vase has, in white, Sweet Begonia (Begonia odorata); Boston Fern (Nephrolepis exaltata) in green; the burgundy foliage is Aechmea ‘Burgundy’ Bromeliad, and the gray green leaf is a cut down palm frond from a seedling Sabal Palm.

Everyone around here celebrated a few days of dry, warm weather and I spent some time tidying and planting a few things in the garden. Ahh.

That is all from South Florida. To see more vases from gardeners around the world, visit Cathy’s blog http://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com