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In a Vase on Monday – Beauty and Some Beasts

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I was in the mood for a cottagey vase this week and set out to find some less tropically mad flowers. Spell check seems to think cottagey is not a word. While roses are out of the question (I choose not to torment myself) I like cottage garden flowers and always have some zinnias going. The heat dome frying my garden finally dissipated and it actually rained!! Hopes were high for some new flowers. I found some beauties and some beasts.

The beauties in the vase are the Zinnias and Beautyberry. I selected seeds last year hoping to get orange and pink Zinnias and here they are! The Beautyberry (Calliocarpa americana) intrigues me. I had this shrub in my garden 600 miles north of here and it refused to grow in the sun and did not produce berries until November. In Florida, I have berries in August, it thrives in full sun and happily lives in sugar sand. It is a head scratcher. Oh, Copper Fennel is also a beauty. This one lives through July (a major accomplishment) and is flowering in August!

The beasts are the ferns and the daisies. The ferns are the invasive Asian Sword Ferns (Nephrolepis brownii) I’ll admit to liking these, pulling them out by the bag and enjoying a few swords in vases from time to time. They aren’t too beastly in the sugar sand, but I can imagine with unlimited water things could get ugly. The other beast is Bidens alba, ironically a valued native pollinator flower – it produces so many seeds it is difficult to keep in one place. The butterflies do love it.

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The Zinnias with a bit of purple Beautyberry and chartruese Fennel flowers.

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The beastly Asian Sword Ferns and white Bidens alba.

I am dreaming of cooler weather and some more rain.

Visit Cathy at Ramblinginthegarden by following the link where more vases full of weekly garden treasures can be found.

In a Vase on Monday – Chasing Christmas

Suddenly it is about two weeks until Christmas. How did that happen? Cards have not been sent and I probably have missed the opportunity to buy a live Christmas tree. Sigh. Well, I will check and see if I can get a crunchy, nearly free tree this week. I am still indulging my distaste for fake plants, Christmas trees included. Tree lots are set up in baking South Florida parking lots in December that are not conducive to live plants of any kind. I am seriously considering making a bromeliad cutting Christmas tree.

I have managed to unearth a bit of holiday cheer in the form of a Christmas gift I received long ago from my mother. The holiday chocolate pot. She gave me this the year my husband and I moved to the suburbs of Atlanta. Seemingly (from her perspective) I was going to morph into a 1950s housewife and invite the neighbor ladies in for holiday hot chocolate and cookies (there are matching mugs). This is the first time the chocolate pot has ever been used. I think my mother would have approved its use as a vase.

The plant palette:

Red flowers draping over the side are Nodding Hibiscus (Malvaviscus arboreus); berries are from the native Firebush (Igiveupon properbotanicalname) – these are beginning stage berries, they eventually form juicy black fruit the birds love.

Chartreuse foliage is from Golden Dewdrop (Duranta repens); white spikes are ‘White Flame’ Salvia; red and yellow flowers are ‘Lady Di’ Heliconias (Heliconia psittacorum); foliage is from ‘Mammey’ Croton (Codieum varigatum).

Thanks to Cathy at http://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com for hosting this weekly garden meme. Follow the link to see more vases.

Happy Holidays from South Florida.