Category Archives: flower arrangements

In A Vase on Monday – Frangipani and Fennel Failure

 

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The promise of the eventuality of summer is evidenced by the Frangipani starting to flower in South Florida. The Frangipani in this vase is Bridal Bouquet, a columnar, semi evergreen variety I have come to love in my garden. It is not as fragrant as other Frangipani but the evergreen foliage and form of the plant make up for any shortcomings in fragrance. I have been waiting to see what color the larger Frangipani in my garden are and blast it they are white as well. So, I am in the market for some more colorful friends for the white flowers.

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The failure in this vase is the Fennel, the chartreuse starbursts looking like Dill or Queen Annes Lace. I have been trying to grow culinary Fennel for years from seed. It gets about half the size of a grocery store Fennel and then bolts. I think the climate here is just wrong for Fennel, but have enjoyed eating the foliage and using it in flower arrangements.20160515_135536

The Burgundy foliage is from my latest Bromeliad bargain. Not a clue what it is. Bargain Bromeliad $5, named specimen, $40. I can live without knowing the name and to me, part of the fun of gardening is seeing what happens next. The other foliage is my everpresent Boston Fern or more likely its evil lookalike tuberous Asian Ferns.

Here is the Bromeliad, burgundy with chartreuse spots, a perfect foil for the yellow green Fennel flowers. If anybody knows its name, please let me know.

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The smoke grey glass vase was from a bargain store near my house bought years ago when I was overrun by a beautiful but much too enthusiastic Red Alstroemeria. The red and gold flecked flowers looked wonderful in the vase, I had a smoke grey glass vase full of Alstroemeria all summer for years.

In A Vase on Monday – Tea Stained Melange

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It was Mother’s Day as I was plotting my Monday vase, so naturally I thought of what my mother might like in a vase. My mother (passed nearly seven years ago) was not nearly as snooty as I am about her flowers and enjoyed just about anything she could grow successfully. I am hard pressed to think of something she really didn’t like. Growing up we always had a seemingly magical forest of Cosmos and Scarlet Runner beans to play in. Many of the plants grown in the garden would end up in a vase on Monday! She would definitely get a kick out of all my wacky tropicals and the vases every Monday.

I ended up with her favorite teapot. I am fairly certain it was a wedding gift, the rim and base stained russet from untold thousands of pots of tea, many shared with me. I walked through my garden and cut everything that was in bloom and arranged it all in the teapot.

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The big leaves in the back are Sea Grape (Coccoloba uvifera), the pink flower in the middle is a Brazilian Plume (Justicia carnea), Florida Gardenias (Tabernaemontana divaricata) on each side in white, Sweet Begonias (Begonia odorata ‘alba’) the smaller white flowers, Beach Sunflower (Helianthus debilis) are the yellow and Parrot Flower (Heliconia psittacorum) the red and yellow on the sides. The teapot is marked Hall, made in the USA.

My husband wandered through as I was assembling the vase and asked me, aghast, ‘Is that your Monday vase?’

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This is a side shoot from Sweet 100 tomatoes I hope to root to extend my tomato season.

Here is my mother, ever the Southern Belle, at the peach packing house with her grandfather in the late 1940s.

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Miss Betty and Mr. Tommy

In A Vase on Monday – Jungle Gardenias

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As a teenager, I determined I needed a signature fragrance (too many magazines and/or romantic stories once again) I chose Jungle Gardenia as my fragrance. Unfortunately, I soon realized most people did not want to ride in a car with me due to the robustness of the perfume.

Growing up in the Deep South, I associate Gardenias with summer and sleeping by an open window  (far away from the shrub) with breezes drifting in wafts of the fragrance of my mother’s Gardenias. A pleasant thought unless you consider the windows were open due to lack of air conditioning and July is miserably hot. Nevertheless, I have fond memories of the fragrance of Gardenias and was looking forward to the flowers on my tropical Florida Gardenias.

Florida Gardenias are different from Gardenias I grew up with. Botanically they are Tabernaemontana divaricata, native to tropical regions of India and Southeast Asia, these are tropical and frost will kill them. The Gardenias I grew up with are Gardenia jasminoides and they will tolerate some frost. The Florida Gardenia in my garden was unearthed after clearing out the overgrown missteps of a previous owner (polite description) I was surprised to find a 10 foot tall sort of oversized Gardenia growing under all sorts of junk that hadn’t seen fertilizer, water or the light of day in who knows how long. I cut off a few bad pieces and hoped for the best. It has bravely regrouped and is flowering, I hope someday it will be a nice tree form Gardenia, the foliage is lovely and somewhat bigger than G. jasminoides.

Here is a close up of the Gardenias, the Gardenia jasminoides is in the center and the Florida Gardenias are on the sides. Some people call these Pinwheel Gardenias for obvious reasons.

Rounding out the posy in pink, Coral Vine, the foliage is from Culinary Fennel and Boston Fern. The cobalt blue vase was a Christmas gift from my brother and sister in law years ago.

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In A Vase on Monday-Tropical Posy

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I am beginning to think I should call these posts “In a Repurposed Object on Monday”. This particular arrangement evolved as I was meandering in my garden with clippers and scissors. I was hoping for some tropical Gardenias but they are still tormenting me with only buds, no blooms.

I was enduring my usual design lecture from myself, must cut 5 flowers followed by foliages (colored)- 3 each,  with contrasting green elements 1 each (coarse and fine textured) As I gathered my elements I realized it was a tropical posy! Relying on my new posy identification skills, a nosegay was formed that was too small to be considered a bouquet. Delightful. If I ever (unlikely) marry again, I wouldn’t mind carrying this. However, a white dress would be out of the question.

The elements of my repurposed object include, the gold glass vase, which I used for a while to hold olive oil by the stove (it has a cork). I determined it would be just as easy to keep the olive oil in the cabinet in the bottle it came in and not worry about how to clean the gold bottle. Reading too many Home and Garden magazines causes these sorts of dilemmas.

The red flowers are Heliconia psittacorum, a prolific flowering perennial, the two colored foliages, in red spots are Piecrust Croton and Ornamental Pineapple in grey green. The green foliage is a Split Leaf Philodendron and Asparagus Fern. I will admit to buying the Split Leaf Philodendron (Philodendron selloum) but that Asparagus Fern just sort of pops up sometimes and I cut it for arrangements.

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In case you were wondering about the Ornamental Pineapple, here it is. The foliage is red and green striped and the pineapples are tiny and inedible, but very pretty. This one was gifted to me by a new gardening friend. Not a clue about the botanical name.

In a Vase on Monday- No Pansies Here

 

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I usually start with one idea and end up with something completely different. After suffering a planting design lecture from myself, I ended up with this. The Orange (called Dwarf Red) Ixoras have started flowering in earnest, so I plucked a few of those and began to make a posy (thank you, Cathy , our meme hostess at ramblinginthegarden) for the new term I love. A posy would be called a bouquet in the US, I can’t speak for anywhere else. My posy just wasn’t working out even though the design principles were solid (more lecturing) fine textured orange contrasting with coarser yellow flowers (Beach Sunflowers) the big coarse purple Solar Sunrise Coleus leaves edged in chartreuse picking up the color of the finer textured Boston Ferns. I give myself a headache thinking about these things sometimes.

After the failure of my posy design to gel, caused primarily by structural issues due to poorly considered stem lengths, I sought a small vase for my finely considered composition. The vase was my mothers favorite pansy jar. A none too fine pressed glass jar from God knows where that was frequently filled with pansies in the winter during my childhood. Perfect for oddly too short stems. My mother, not being much of an arranger, would have loved this one. The below photo is my mother (in 1948) overlooking the pansy jar.

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Pansies in South Florida are an ill considered indulgence. Lasting when temperatures are perfect, maybe two weeks, and requiring more vigilance than I possess I have forsaken them for more tropical flowers. So, no pansies for the pansy jar. But a few new plant friends have been made to grace this heirloom vase.

In a Vase on Monday -Natives Tea Party

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The copper tea kettle is one of my favorite things. I bought at a flea market on a weekend trip to the Appalachian Mountains many years ago. I am relatively certain it won’t hold water as it was repaired on the bottom and you can see through the repair. What is lovely about this kettle is the patina of many years of use with dents and hand crafted solder joints adding to its beauty. I can only speculate how many souls have been warmed by the contents of this vessel. The Blue Willow teacups are English and belonged to my grandmother, the saucers are too cracked to use and are kept for their patina as well.

As neither the cups or the kettle can be used for tea, this is a party for the natives. The native flowers in the kettle, of course. The arrangement is primarily native plants of South Florida, the yellow flowers are Beach Sunflower (Helianthus debilis), the orange tubular flowers are Firebush (Hamelia patens), Boston Fern, the purple foliage is Purple Hearts (Setcresea pallida), native to North America says the Florida plant database, and joining the party some Painted Fingernail Bromeliad foliage with the cerise tips, from somewhere south of the border.

As I was arranging the flowers in a pickle jar to place inside the kettle, it occurred to me I should go antiquing to see if I could find some copper friends to join the kettle.

In A Vase on Monday – Spring Renovations

 

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Here is the Spring part. I put this vase together and thought ‘wow, that really looks like a fresh spring arrangement’. The bright pink flowers with baby Boston fern fronds and some bits of cream Begonias and foliage spoke to me of new beginnings in the garden.

The pink flowers are a new beginning. They are from a Coral Vine (Antigon leptopus) on a nearby fence. This vine is native to Mexico and considered invasive in South Florida, the owners of the fence are snowbirds, winter visitors from the frozen north, and come to Florida for the winter. This vine is unapologetically immolated annually and I have never seen another one around. To the owner’s delight, I cut it back for the flowers. It started to flower just about the time the owners went back north, to my delight.

The rest of the arrangement is comprised of – in white and chartreuse, the flowers and seeds of the Sweet Begonia (Begonia odorata ‘Alba’). The foliage is my ever present Boston Fern, the new spring growth, some culinary Fennel and the variegated is from Hawaiian Snow Bush (Breynia nivosa)

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And now the renovations part. Last week I had Orchid Tree branches in this vase and they lasted precisely 50 hours. The flowers wilted despite my best efforts. The buds looked promising so I plucked the offending flowers and left the budded branches to hopefully reflower. After a couple of days I figured out this was not happening. The foliage was in such good shape I cut some Heliconias with long stems and added them to the vase, here is the result.

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I like this arrangement as well, it seems like the tropical version. Below is last week’s arrangement. Hopefully this one lasts longer.

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In A Vase on Monday – Bourbon and Branch for Easter

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I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia; the Deep South. Celebrating Easter has some traditions. There is usually an arrangement of flowers centered around Spring featuring pastel colors and bulbs, maybe some forced branches from Cherry trees if Easter is early.

The traditional Easter fare is a ham criss crossed with a knife, canned pineapple rings centered in the squares, cloves inserted (and sometimes a maraschino cherry) the entire ham is then doused in brown sugar and baked. The women are madly working in the kitchen while the men are outside having a Bourbon and Branch.

Bourbon and Branch is a cocktail, branch is water from the pure running creek in the backyard.

I have eschewed the ham tradition and the bourbon tradition. This leaves me looking for some other kind of branches as the creeks I would drink water from are few and far between. What is currently blooming in my garden is mostly orange, not what I had in mind for an Easter arrangement.

The Hong Kong Orchid tree has been flowering for a couple of weeks, a nice lavendar color and has a gnarled branch look about it. I decided to try one of those large branch arrangements that appear effortless. Ha, the branches are twisty and uncooperative and have to be pruned into submission. Then I decided to add a Palm frond, it is Easter, just a bit late for the palm part. The frond overwhelms everything so I cut it down to a smaller size and add some russet Bromeliad foliage to pick up the darker color in the Orchid flowers.

Here is the result, I thought this was a bit weird, but I like it. I left the pods and some browning foliage on Orchid tree branches and crushed the ends a bit to see if they would last longer that way. A semi traditional Easter arrangement, as I have the branch part covered, maybe I should try to find the bourbon.

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In A Vase on Monday – Alpinia Joy

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No, that is not Almond Joy or Alpine Joy, it is Alpinia Joy. Alpinia zerumbet to be exact. The Shell Ginger. One of my garage sale finds from a few years ago; the plant is well known for taking two years to flower and this one was true to form. I have been waiting and finally got a flower.

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It takes about a week to fully bloom and bit by bit peeks out from under the foliage. There is a lovely ginger scent when the plant is cut, although a member of the Ginger family it is not a culinary ginger.

The rock that keeps appearing is a hunk of Fool’s Gold from my father’s (the geologist) collection of obscure mineral crystals. I was looking for some marbles to use in the vase to hold the stem, I have some lavendar ones somewhere. I knew where they were before we moved – so inspiration struck and I thought to use the Fool’s Gold vaguely remembering something bad happens to it in water. It is a Pyrite, iron sulfide, I think, and what happens is instantaneous rust when it gets wet. I suspect it would have killed the flower if I had left it in the water. I was also left with the dilemma of how to get the sharp bits that fell off  out of the stainless steel sink without scratching the sink. After everything was rinsed and clean, it dawned on me,  I really didn’t have an arrangement at all.

Back to the garden, fortunately spring brings some interesting flowers into bloom.

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Contents of this vase are:

Soap Aloe flowers (Aloe saponaria), in the foreground; Parrots Flower (Heliconia psittacorum) and foliage; the orange foliage is from Blanchetiana Bromeliad (an Aechmea type)

The vases are both from a simple design phase I went through in the 80s. Less is more or less is a bore depending on how you look at it. The flowers are the focus if these vases are used.

Here are both vases and the Fool’s Gold:

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Moral of this story, no iron minerals in your vases. Fool’s Gold is named for a good reason.

Rock on.

In A Vase on Monday – Refugees from the Potting Bench

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I have had a trying dental week, culminating in a root canal followed by pain medication. Never having experienced a root canal, I had not realized the need for pain medication. Vicodin and I usually do not get along, but the drug came highly recommended by the doctor and his staff, so I relented and took some. My problem with these sorts of medications is – if 3 steps are needed to complete a task, only 2 are retained by my mind. Example, to set the timer on the stove it has to be turned on, time set, then started. The loss of any step results in no time. Then you are left wondering if the pasta is done and when you started it. On the other hand, the teeth feel really fine. I have, wisely, stayed away from my car.

I awoke this morning feeling much better, put some cat food in my cereal bowl, got a fork to eat it, then realized it was time for more coffee and a walk around the garden.

The search for vase materials was on and I stopped at my potting bench where all my plant refugees looking for a home live until they are planted. Sometimes it takes years to find a home as I tend to buy plants without considering where they should go. This Bromeliad had bravely put up a flower after languishing on the bench for quite some time. The fluorescent salmon color is quite lovely. Here is the unnamed Bromeliad, I think it is an Aechmea, burgundy and olive green foliage accent the salmon flower:

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At the same time I have been rooting some cuttings from an overgrown Solar Sunrise Coleus and thought they looked nice together in this big olive green container I bought at GoodWill (charity shop). The Blue Daze Evolvulous was  left over from a new bed that I am working on in the garden.

I like the combination and have added some other refugees for company. The shell is from the ocean, of course, and the pseudo Mayan sculpture is an incense burner from my brother, circa 1975 and Pier One. I keep this around for sentimental reasons, and it looks great with the Salmon Bromeliad.

In case of culinary concerns, I gave the cat the cat food and she was quite happy, had another cup of coffee and no more Vicodin. Now all I need is a filling to seal the root canal. Joy and Bliss later this week.