Scilla peruviana, which I've found to be a finicky bulb, has bloomed in my back garden for the second year in a row despite this season's stingy rain. The bees love it and so so I.
I cut one
Scilla stem as the start of this week's vase, sticking to a blue and white theme.
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| The vase could have used more Scilla stems but I couldn't bring myself to cut them |
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| Back view: The bees love Echium handiense too and I had to wave them away before carrying the cut stems into the house |
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| Top view |
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| Clockwise from the upper left, the vase contains: Scilla peruviana, Coleonema album (aka White Breath of Heaven), white Freesia, Echium handiense, and Osteospermum '4D Silver' |
Of necessity, my second vase started out with yellow
Freesias. We got 2 (!!!) rainstorms last week and, although neither could be called a drought-buster, they flattened many of the
Freesias, some of which had to be cut before they were stepped on. Last Monday night's storm delivered 0.15/inch of rain and the second storm, which spanned Friday and Saturday, added another 0.28/inch, beefing up our seasonal total to a still paltry 1.88 inches. The peninsula on which I live was short-changed by comparison to some areas but our total is on par with the tally for downtown Los Angeles. However, on the good news side of things, the fears concerning another round of killer mudslides in the areas that burned during the January wildfires weren't realized and the snowpack in the Sierra Mountains, the source of about one-third of California's water, got a boost.
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| Sunset last night lent a pink tinge to the snow also now topping the nearby mountains to the northeast |
But back to the yellow
Freesias and vase #2. I accumulated a lot of yellow blooms in my round-trip of the garden before reaching the decision that I needed to balance all that yellow with another color besides green.
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| I cut the blue Salvia to strike the balance I sought but it wasn't until I clipped 2 short stems of pansies that the arrangement came together |
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| Back view: I'd cut the new foliage of a tree-like shrub to fill in and provide some height but it drooped even before I got around to putting the arrangement together so I reused stems of the Coprosma I cut for one of last week's vases |
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| Top view with the blue flowers largely hidden |
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| Clockwise from the upper left, the vase contains: Argyranthemum 'Go Daisy Mega White', Coprosma repens 'Plum Hussey', Euryops chrysanthemoides 'Sonnenschein', noID Narcissus, Salvia 'Mystic Spires', yellow Freesia, and, in the center, Viola 'Matrix Midnight Glow' |
Visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden to find more "In a Vase on Monday" posts.
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| The vases in their places |
All material © 2012-2018 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party
