In a Vase on Monday: Survivor Story

I'd hoped I might have Camellia sasanqua to use in my vase this week.  When the weather cooled a week ago, a few of these flowers began to appear in a shady area adjacent to my vegetable garden.  I also had a back-up plan: if there were too few Camellias, I could use stems of Tagetes lemmonii, which had also started to bloom in earnest.  Then, we got another heatwave.  The Camellias shriveled and even the moderately drought tolerant Tagetes, buffeted by the Santa Ana winds (aka "devil winds") that accompanied the heat, looked worse for the wear and tear.  So the search for flowers and foliage to fill this week's vase, prepared in connection with the meme sponsored by Cathy of Rambling in the Garden, became another scavenger hunt.  The resulting vase is a mix of flowers that survived the heat and a few plants that love the heat, including one recent acquisition.

If this composition has a focal point, I suppose it's the Bougainvillea, a heat-loving plant.  Our red Bougainvillea, inherited with the house, has never been a vigorous grower but, it it were, my husband probably would have removed it by now as he considers this an "evil" plant.  This stems from the fact that the Bougainvillea at our former house grew about a foot a week and scratched his beloved electric car, which he'd lovingly converted from gas-power.  Removing those plants with their vicious thorns was a monumental exercise he isn't likely to forget.  However, this Bougainvillea isn't anywhere near as ambitious - it gets by with an annual trim (which I handle as I wouldn't trust my husband not to get carried away).

The Bougainvillea picks up the color of the single stem of Asclepias tucked in against it

The other elements in this week's vase include:

• Asclepias curassavica 'Silky Red'
• Gomphrena (no ID), probably G. haageana, picked up on a whim on a recent swing through a garden center
• Leucadendron 'Wilson's Wonder,' repeating last week's performance
• Pennisetum setaceum 'Fireworks'
• Persicaria microcephala 'Red Dragon'
• Tagetes lemmonii (aka Copper Canyon Daisy)
• Zinnia (no ID), one of the few seedlings which survived on nominal infusions of water this summer

The new Gomphrena came in red and orange so I got a few of each

The red-tinged bracts of Leucadendron 'Wilson's Wonder' almost look like flowers

The furry flowers of Pennisetum 'Fireworks' appeared with the heat

I picked the least scrappy looking Copper Canyon daisies to add a whiff of their delicious scent to the vase

I cut one of the few remaining Zinnia in my garden

I cut a variety of other floral and foliage survivors that didn't make the final cut, including Leonotis leonurus (aka lion's tail) and Bulbine frutescens 'Hallmark' (aka snake flower and cat's tail).  These ended up in another vase with single stems of coleus and the yellow form of Russelia equisetiformis.

The main vase landed in the foyer.

These are my contributions to Cathy's popular weekly meme focused on flowers gathered from one's own garden.  Please visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden to see her creation and to find links to posts by other contributing gardeners.


All material © 2012-2014 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

Bouquets for Independence Day

Earlier this week, while helping my husband clean out his parents' home in preparation for its eventual sale, I came across a vase I gave my mother-in-law almost 20 years ago when she and my father-in-law moved into that house.  They set up housekeeping from scratch following the loss of their former home, and most of their possessions, in a fire that swept through Malibu.  The vase isn't at all unique or valuable but I decided to keep it as a relic of another difficult time.

As the vase is blue with touches of dark red, it thought it would be perfect for an Independence Day bouquet.  The vase is tall so it needed relatively long-stemmed flowers, which restricted the choices of suitable flowers from my garden.  As I still have scads of blue Agapanthus and white Shasta daisies (Leucanthemum x superbum), those were obvious selections for my red, white and blue arrangement.  However, as I have no true red flowers in my garden, selecting the third element was more difficult.  I ended up including Rudbeckia 'Cherry Brandy' and cuttings of Bougainvillea and Cercis occidentalis.

Although there's just one stem of the Rudbeckia in the arrangement, I think it's the star of the composition, but then I'm in love with this flower, which has bloomed on and off for almost a year now in my front border.

The dark pink bracts of the Bougainvillea and the magenta seedpods of the Cercis pick up the strong color of the Rudbeckia, as well as the small burgundy touches in the vase.  The Bougainvillea and Cercis show up more clearly in the rear view of the composition as shown below.

This bouquet is my contribution this week to the Garden Appreciation Society sponsored by Erin at The Impatient Gardener.  However, as I have friends coming for dessert and drinks on the Fourth of July, I prepared 2 other smaller bouquets this week to decorate the house.  The one below has been tucked into a shelf sitting below the mirror in our guest bathroom.

There are 3 stems of Shasta daisies, statice (Limonium perezii) and a sprig of yarrow (Achillea millefolium) in the arrangement.  The reflection of the flowers in the mirror makes it look larger than it really is.

I also put a medium sized vase on the table facing the front door.  The arrangement in this one isn't red, white and blue but the stems of the Leucadendron made me think of fireworks.  The red-toned foliage is complemented by 2 stems of Gaillardia x grandiflora 'Arizona Sun' and a few stems of Coreopsis grandiflora.

Enjoy the holiday, however you may be celebrating it.   To see other gardeners' floral offerings, please visit Erin's site.