But the garden, especially the cutting garden, is burgeoning with flowers, and I didn't want everything to go over without getting full use of all my work sowing seeds and making that bed last fall and over the winter. That would be a frustrating waste.
So when I woke up this morning feeling a bit better I decided to get out and start cutting a bunch of things to see what went with what. At first I thought I might just plonk everything together in a single big vase and call it a day, but it soon became apparent to me that although I like the look of lots of color in a garden separated by lots of green, I'm not so fond of it all squished together in a vase.
I had quite a lot of one particular Dahlia that opens with a touch of lavender in the center and soon turns to pure white, which went well with the dark blue larkspur, Hosta flowers and blue statice, so they went into a big pitcher and took the place of honor in the kitchen. Although I am still a newbie at this flower arranging lark, I do know that you are supposed to remove all leaves from flower stems before standing them in water in the vase. That makes statice quite a conundrum, since the stems are basically entirely clothed in leaves. I put on some disposable nitrile gloves and ran my thumb nail all along the stems to remove the leaves. It took a bit of working out but I managed to get pretty efficient at it by the last one. I don't know if that was the right thing to do, but we'll see.
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| Partly open with a touch of lavender |
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| Fully open |
The rest got aranged in a somewhat organized manner in a second vase and set out on the back porch beside the chairs where Nigel often sits and reads.
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| A tall Phlox called 'Starfire,' a dark cactus-type Dahlia and lots more 'Totally Tangerine' Dahlia |
I have more 'Totally Tangerine' Dahlia than I can cut reasonably. It's taking up real estate in the cutting garden that I can put to use for something else, either a different Dahlia or for Zinnias next year. So I think I will dig some of them and offer them at the next bloggers' swap.
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| Dahlia 'Totally Tangerine' very happy in the cutting garden |
I also did a third arrangement, if you can call it that. I have some very very very tall lilies in the garden. I think they might be 'Black Beauty,' but I can't remember. At any rate, they are much too tall for any support I have, and as soon as they started to open, they all flopped and bent, so I cut them rather than have to keep seeing them in that state in the garden. All except for one that managed to lean on this six-foot tall birdhouse.
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| I noticed chickadees living in there earlier this spring |
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| There are three candelabra-like stems in this vase |
Cathy at Rambling in the Garden hosts In a Vase on Monday. Check out her post here. Lots of people participate in this meme, so be sure and check out the comments, where other bloggers leave links to their posts too.