One of the regular stories I write for the Spokesman-Review is a monthly how-to floral arrangement. Don't ask me what qualifies me to do this except for the fact that I love looking at flowers.
I dream of having a greenhouse in the backyard one day and growing a cutting garden, but before then I will have to figure out how not to kill flowers. My vegetables go gangbusters, but growing flowers just doesn't work for me.
Our next door neighbor in our old house put us to shame with her flowers. To say she put us to shame really doesn't begin to explain how much more lovely her yard was than ours. When she moved into her house, she actually brought all the flowers from her old house with her. In hundreds of pots. Maybe thousands. She would try to give me some starts, but they would die in my care. By the way, did you know there's some rule where you're not supposed to say "thank you" when a neighbor gives you plants for your yard? You're supposed to say things like, "Well, isn't this lovely?" She told me "thank you" jinxes the plant so it won't grow. Maybe that was my problem.
Trimming stems and plopping an arrangement of flowers (grown by someone else) in a vase, though? I can handle that.
Here are some of my bouquets for the S-R articles, including the first one which I shot here in Rhode Island today. It's a farmer's market-style bouquet of zinnia, Marguerite daisies, dahlias, spirea, bachelor’s buttons and yarrow.
The carnations were my suggestion for Valentine's Day (channeling Carrie Bradshaw.)
The Easter basket came out kind of goofy.
The red, white and blue arrangement ran a week or so before the Fourth of July.
Gorgeous. I love the red, white and blue with the gerber daisies. (I think those are gerber daisies.) What do I know, I just told Matt I wanted clamydia on the arch in our back yard. Um no, that would be clementis.
Posted by: anymommy | July 13, 2008 at 08:20 PM
Love the flowers in the top photo! It must be heavenly to have a garden, grow flowers and vedgetables, and have a lawn for the kiddies to play on....
Posted by: Tine | July 15, 2008 at 07:12 AM
Stacey--you kill me.
Tine--I'm guessing the living spaces are pretty tight in Copenhagen, huh? But then again--you get to live in Copenhagen!! How great is that?
When we bought our house last year, we were debating between a downtown loft and a house with a big backyard. We made the right choice. I can't take the credit for growing all these flowers, though. That's my goal for next summer, but for now these were all bought from florists or farmers' markets. My August floral arrangement story might be homegrown. Depends on how my sunflowers look when I get back to Spokane.
Posted by: Megan | July 21, 2008 at 09:02 AM