A friend and I took off on an excursion to our favorite Orange County garden center on Saturday. This particular garden center has a wide selection of indoor decor, which I usually steer clear of, preferring to invest every dollar I have to spend on plants. But my friend enjoys checking out all the store has to offer and this time I broke from my standard operating procedure. As it turned out, we both bought plants but I was the only one who bought anything inside the store. I brought home a vase. The store carried 3 vases of the same size and shape in different but coordinating finishes and I was sorely tempted to bring home all 3 but I reeled myself under control. This is exactly why I try to stay out of such stores - limited will power.
In any case, the new vase called out for blue flowers. Finding a single stem of
Ceanothus already in bloom sealed the deal. I'd planned to stick to a blue and white palette but, although the vase is relatively short (about 7 inches tall), the stems I collected were generally shorter still. So I ended up adding bright yellow Iceland poppies to the mix to get the extra height the arrangement needed.
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| Front view showing more yellow and white than blue |
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| The shorter blue flowers feature more prominently in the back view |
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| The yellow poppies hog the scene when the vase is viewed from the top |
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I stuffed a surprising number of plant stems down the 2.5 inch throat of this vase:
Top row - Anemone coronaria (a cheat as the stems came from newly purchased plants), noID Ceanothus, and Globularia x indubia
Middle row - Lavandula multifida, Osteospermum '4D Silver', and Papaver nudicaule
Bottow row - Ranunculus (the first one to bloom), Pyrethropsis hosmariense, and Salvia cacalifolia
(Included but not highlighted - Chrysanthemum paludosum, now classified as Mauranthemum paludosum) |
There's a second vase (of course). Two of my largest
Leucadendrons are going nuts and it's almost impossible to ignore them when passing through the garden.
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| Front view |
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| The back view could have used some dressing up but I ran out of time |
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| Top view |
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| Clockwise from the upper left, this vase contains: Leucadendron salignum 'Chief', L. 'Wilson's Wonder', noID Narcissus, and Zantedeschia aethiopica |
That's it for my interior decorating this week. For more Monday vases,
visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.
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| The new vase sits in the front entry, accompanied by blue bird salt-and-pepper shakers inherited from my mother-in-law, and the second vase sits on the dining table, having evicted the only somewhat bedraggled vase with the Leucadendron stems created 2 weeks ago |
All material © 2012-2017 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party
