In a Vase on Monday: Bits and pieces

We received a great deal of rain between November 13th and November 21st, at least by our standards.  According to my rooftop rain meter, it was nearly three inches and it could've been more as the meter was clogged for almost a day during the height of the first storm.  Unfortunately, my flowers took something of a beating so I was left to collect a lot of bits and pieces to fill my first vase, which was inspired by the last of dahlias that'd surprised me by blooming earlier this month, long after I'd given up on it flowering at all.

Not only was the dahlia late to flower, it also wasn't anything close to what what the tuber's seller advertised.  My best guess is that it's Dahlia 'Ferncliff Illusion'.  I cut the last fully opened flower and one partially opened bud and then disposed of the tuber.

Back view: I used 2 stems of Polygala (aka sweet pea shrub) to create a base to support the dahlia and squeezed in lots of other small stems, including the 2 stems of the Chrysanthemum 'Fairbank Purple Spoon' shown in this view.

Overhead view

Clockwise from the upper left: Abelia grandiflora 'Hopley's Variegated', Argyranthemum 'Everest', Gomphrena decumbens 'Itsy Bitsy', mystery Dahlia (possibly 'Ferncliff Illusion'), Chrysanthemum 'Fairbank Purple Spoon', Matthiola incana in ivory and magenta, and Polygala myrtifolia

Protea 'Claire' produced two especially nice flowers this week and I couldn't resist cutting them for a simple arrangement.

These 2 Protea flowers opened more fully than those I've previously cut.  I used the dark Leucadendron 'Ebony' to play off the dark center of the Protea's flower.  'Ebony' is a sport of L. 'Safari Sunset', which I purchased for a song years ago before it'd been clearly differentiated from 'Safari' by sellers.

Back view

Overhead view

From left to right: Leucadendron salignum 'Blush', L. 'Ebony', and hybrid Protea 'Claire'

Our Thanksgiving holiday is later this year than usual but the holidays still feel as if they've arrived all too soon.  But then it's hard to feel excited this year with the continual horrors pouring out of our federal government.  My husband and I'll have a quiet Thanksgiving but I'm scheduled to meet up with a group of girlfriends the following Sunday, which I'm looking forward to.  Since we've all retired and some of us have scattered, this group meets all too infrequently.

For more IAVOM creations, check in with Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.

All material © 2012-2025 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

In a Vase on Monday: From Big & Bold to Dainty & Demure

The weekly "In a Vase on Monday" meme is hosted by Cathy of Rambling in the Garden.  As this is the meme's twelfth anniversary, Cathy threw out a challenge for this week's post, asking participants to includeboth  a pun and a prop in their posts.  When I come up with a pun it's usually by accident and I found myself unable to produce one intentionally on this occasion.  I briefly considered punting the task to AI (hey, does that statement count?).  But that felt like a cheat and I'm also a bit creeped out by the extent to which our society is becoming reliant on AI.  So I gave up on a pun and went with alliteration with my post title, which is another variety of word play.  I did include a couple of props, though.

Here's my "big and bold" arrangement:

The inspiration came from the Protea 'Claire' in my front garden.  Most of the plant's flowers are still in bud so I cut only 2 of them, one of which was already in decline.  I considered cutting a bud or 2 but I surmised, and online sources confirmed, that those buds won't open fully if cut too early (i.e., before the petals open enough to reveal the sepals).

Back view

Overhead view

Clockwise from the upper left: Coprosma 'Eclipse', Cuphea 'Starfire Pink', Leucadendron 'Safari Sunset', a newly opened Protea 'Claire', and another Protea flower in decline

The second, "dainty and demure" arrangement, was inspired by a Chrysanthemum I purchased on the fly a couple of weeks ago.  Chrysanthemums are commonly flash-in-a-pan offers at local garden centers here, sold as sad little potted plants in the lead up to the late-November US Thanksgiving holiday.  I've never seen any of the really fancy Chrysanthemums sold here but this year I discovered some prettier-than-usual selections in larger pots, one of which I brought home to fill an outdoor container.

I had a bit of trouble finding suitable companions for the purple Chrysanthemum 'Fairbank Purple Spoon' but I found a few short stems, all of which worked in this small cut crystal vase

Back view

Overhead view

Clockwise from the upper left: Chrysanthemum 'Fairbank Purple Spoon', Cosmos bipinnatus in pink and magenta, Leptospermum 'Copper Glow', and scented Matthiola incana (aka stock)

I had to dig around for props too.  Working on the "big" and "dainty" references, I initially considered polished black stones in various sizes before selecting two sizes of cat figurines (mainly because I have some on hand).

The 2 arrangements in place with their props on hand

The props are different in both size and quality.  Meeko jumped on the dining room table to check out the china piece (and no, she's not supposed to do that).

For more IAVOM creations, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.  My my personal thanks to Cathy for pulling together this friendly meme, maintaining its currency for twelve years (!!!), and offering ongoing support to her many contributors. 

All material © 2012-2025 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

In a Vase on Monday: Let's get the new year started!

I've already cleared most of the spare decorations I set up to celebrate Christmas this year.  With those tucked away, I was more than ready to cut flowers to add color to the house.  It's been cold and damp for the last few days due to a persistent marine layer, which has made puttering in the garden less comfortable than usual but, as those marine layer conditions have contributed six one-hundredths of an inch of precipitation, I'm not going to complain (much).  However, there aren't many options available to fill a vase so the two arrangements I have to offer today may look a lot like retreads of earlier ones.

The first arrangement was inspired by another Protea flower.  Two more Protea buds remain but I elected to leave them on the shrub to develop, which sent me scrounging for other plants to accent the one I cut.

I balanced the Protea flower with an equally flashy stem of Medinilla myriantha (aka Malaysian orchid)

Back view: I used multiple stems of Cuphea 'Starfire Pink' to fill out the arrangement, along with the ever-useful Leptospermum stems

Top view

Clockwise from the upper left: Argyranthemum frutescens, Cuphea 'Starfire Pink', Leptospermum scoparium 'Pink Pearl', Medinilla myriantha, Plectranthus scutellariodes 'Florida Sun Rose', and Protea neriifolia 'Claire'

For my second arrangement, I recycled the yellow Alstroemeria I included in last week's vase, as well as several other stems that were still in good shape.  I've been using a "flower food" in my vases for the last several weeks and it seems to be making a big difference in the vase life of many of my flowers.  My Lisianthus looked good for nearly two weeks and the Grevillea stems I used last week, which usually fall apart within four days, held up through yesterday.

The colors in this arrangement just made me happy, which seemed a good way to start the new year

The back view could have used dressing up but so it goes.  The back side of this vase faces the wall anyway.

Top view

Clockwise from the upper left: Corokia virgata 'Sunsplash', Correa 'Ivory Bells', noID Narcissus, Alstroemeria 'Inca Sundance', Grevillea 'Peaches & Cream', Leucadendron salignum 'Blush', and L. s. 'Chief'

Yesterday was my twelfth blog anniversary.  Honestly, when I published my first post on a whim in late December 2012, I never expected that I'd still be at it twelve years later.  According to Blogger's statistics, I've recorded 1942 pots, accumulated 44,694 comments (roughly half of which were my own responses to commentators), and racked up 2,011,184 views.  I've appreciated the advice and feedback commentators have provided, the friends I've made over the years, and the general sense of camaraderie the medium provides.  Many people criticize social media and I'd agree that much of that is toxic but I appreciate all the garden bloggers and garden-avid readers out there every day.  Whether you take time to add a comment or just stop by, thank you!

For more of this week's IAVOM creations, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.  Best wishes for a happy new year too!

All material © 2012-2024 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

In a Vase on Monday: Mixing things up

I participated in a lovely Zoom meeting with a half dozen of the IAVOM contributors on Sunday morning Pacific time.  It was great to see everyone, if only virtually.

It was on the cool side on Sunday, in the low-to-upper 50sF (11-14C), so I didn't dilly-dally in the garden when it came time to pick flowers, not that there were all that many options available to me this week.  My first arrangement was inspired by a particularly attractive Protea bloom.  As usual, the challenge was to find something to pair with it.  I ended up combining plants hailing from different parts of the world, rather like our Zoom conference.

The flowers of Protea neriifolia 'Pink Ice' in my north-side garden have dried up but its cousin, Protea 'Claire', had the beautiful bloom, which is shown front and center here.  That plant also has 3 more nice buds. 

I hadn't planned to use more Camellia flowers this week but the back view needed a flourish and I discovered 3 stems bearing multiple flowers

Top view

Clockwise from the upper left, with species origins in parentheses: Alstroemeria 'Inca Vienna' (South America), Camellia sasanqua (South Asia), Coprosma repens 'Fireburst' (New Zealand), Leptospermum scoparium 'Pink Pearl' (New Zealand), and Protea neriifolia 'Claire' (South Africa and Australia)

My second arrangement is smaller.  It was inspired by a lavender-tinged lisianthus and provided an opportunity to use the bush violets (Barleria obtusa) that are suddenly fading away.

In retrospect, the lisianthus (Eustoma grandiflorum) looks a little dingy next to the bright white of the snapdragons

I think I like the back view better

Top view

Clockwise from the upper left: Abelia grandiflora 'Hopley's Variegated', Felicia aethiopica, Eustoma grandiflora, Antirrhinum majus 'Speedy Sonnet White', Salvia discolor, S. 'Mystic Spires', and Barleria obtusa

The bomb cyclone and atmospheric river that hit the Pacific Northwest and Northern California hard Friday and Saturday largely petered out by the time it reached us in coastal Southern California.  Blogger friends in Northern California mentioned getting from two to seven inches of rain.  We got a total of eight one-hundredths of an inch, which doesn't come near to a good soaking.  The storm system was over and gone by Sunday morning when I woke up.  (The cat sounds her personal alarm just after 6am each day.)

View looking southeast toward the entrance to the Port of Los Angeles as the sun stretched above the cloud bank

View looking at the northeast section of the harbor with boats and cranes still half-hidden by clouds

For more IAVOM creations, check in with Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.

All material © 2012-2024 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

In a Vase on Monday: Protea flowers at last!

I planted my first Protea 'Pink Ice' in the ground in 2018, after it spent two years in a large pot without flowering.  Almost six years after planting it in the ground, I finally have flowers.  I planted another Protea cultivar last December and it's already developing flowers so I'm guessing that the magic ingredient was two years of good rain.  I only cut two flowers because I want to enjoy them outside too.

The Protea blooms are very heavy and I struggled to find the right vase, making do with this one my mother bought me in Finland many years ago, on her one and only trip to her parents' home country

Back view: I used a mix of Leucadendron foliage (as well as Rudbeckias) to fill out the vase.  Leucadendrons are members of the larger Proteaceae family.

Top view

Clockwise from the upper left: Correa 'Wyn's Wonder', Cuphea 'Honeybells', Rudbeckia hirta ''Sahara', Dahlia 'Excentric', Leucadendron salignum 'Chief', L. s. 'Blush', and Protea neriifolia 'Pink Ice'

The first Dahlia 'Hometown Hero' blooms are just getting started but I decided to wait until those flowers are more fully open to cut them for an arrangement so instead I made use of a mix of the dahlias that keep toppling over.

I included 4 varieties of dahlias in this arrangement

Back view: a few Rudbeckia served to fill holes

Top view

Clockwise from the upper left: Dahlia 'Creme de Cognac', D. 'Fairway Spur' in 2 forms, D. 'La Luna', Leptospermum 'Copper Glow', Plectranthus scutellarioides 'Indian Summer' (coleus), Rudbeckia hirta 'Sahara', and Dahlia 'Summer's End'

Once again, I also put together a small third arrangement for the kitchen island, utilizing more dahlias of course.

Vitex trifolia is at its exuberant best in late summer, although it droops in vases during the first 24 hours after its stems are cut as shown here.  Digitalis purpurea is also still flowering in my cutting garden so I had to cut Dahlia 'Mikayla Miranda' to show off both.

I'm glad the dahlia train is still running but I've already started thinking about my cool season cutting garden, even if its been far from cool here thus far.  Our morning marine layer continues to keep it cooler along the coast than it's been in the inland areas but last week's temperatures were in the mid-80sF (30C) most days.  This week may be cooler but that remains to be seen.  Meanwhile, our 2025 "water year" started October 1st and my year-to-date precipitation total now reads 0.02/inch.  That is wholly attributable to moisture from the heavy marine layers.  There's still no rain in the forecast for us in the foreseeable future.

For more IAVOM creations, visit our host, Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.

All material © 2012-2024 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

Adjustments

I met a good friend for lunch earlier this week.  We'd worked together at a start-up company many years ago, she as legal counsel and me in human resource management.  After that company was acquired by a larger one, we both moved on to different opportunities but we got together once or twice a year until the pandemic.  Meeting up again after five years, we had a lot of catching up to do so it was a very long lunch!  She told me about her kids, the eldest already in his second year of college, another on the brink of launching out into the world on his own terms, and the youngest looking for ways to meld her love of ballet with a future career.  I brought her up to speed on my nieces and nephews, my trip to the Puget Sound, and my recent bout with COVID, among other things.  A non-gardener, she asked me if I was "done" with my garden, and I replied with the familiar refrain that "gardens are never done."  I also mentioned the situation in progress five miles away from me, where a very old landslide has stepped up its pace, apparently as a result of two years of heavier-than-usual rainfall.  She lives fifty miles to the south and it's not daily news there as it is in Los Angeles County.  Land movement, once measured in inches or less a year, has accelerated to feet per month.  As power lines fell and underground utilities were affected, electricity has been indefinitely turned off to some three hundred homes and gas was cut to nearly the same number.  Efforts were underway to pump the water "seepage," measured in gallons per minutes in spots, into special wells as a way of slowing the slide when another geologic survey was ordered prior to expansion of that plan.  They found a second, bigger, faster-moving slide hundreds of feet underneath the first one so plans are now uncertain.  It's a chilling example of the challenges nature can impose.  Still, the affected residents are trying to find ways to stay in their homes.

Anxious as I am to see the start of our rainy season after our long dry period, I also have to hope that any rain we get this year may fall only lightly on the affected area.  Meanwhile, I'm making adjustments to my garden as circumstances change.  In the front garden, I've done a lot of tweaking.

I planted 6 'Maori Queen' Phormiums in my front garden in late 2014.  Three got very big and 2 of those started looking ungainly.  I removed those 2 last week.  Before and after shots are shown above, reflecting the removal of the one flopping over the Lomandra longifolia surrounding it.

The photo on the left shows the second Phormium I removed several feet away from the first one.  I left the most stately Phormium in place as you can see in both after shots.

I also refurbished 3 of the 6 barrels surrounding the Magnolia tree.  In addition to Dahlia 'Labyrinth' the barrel shown here had held a peach foxglove and Calibrachoa, both of which had died back.  I filled in the holes with an a 'Skyscraper Orange' Salvia and a 'Little Pink Splash' Pelargonium.  The black rocks are intended to deter digging on the part of raccoons.

Before I replanted this barrel, all the annual Dianthus had died back, leaving only an Argyranthemum with dark pink flowers and one small 'Choco Chili' Alternanthera.  I cut back the scraggly Argyranthemum and added another Alternanthera, 2 coleus (Plectranthus scutellairiodes 'Wasabi' and 'Down Town Columbus'), as well as a small polka dot plant (Hypoestes phyllostachys).

I pulled everything that had been in this barrel and planted coleus 'Indian Summer', 2 Pentas lanceolata, white Impatiens, and another polka dot plant

The Dutch Iris and Primula vulgaris I had growing at the front of this bed earlier this year were done for the season so I recently added another 'Choco Chili' Alternanthera and more Plectranthus scutellarioides 'Wasabi' to the other coleus I've been tucking in whenever I find more I like

Three of the 4 Prostanthera ovatifolia 'Variegata' growing in my garden suddenly fell into decline last week.  I've cut back the 3 that occupied pots to their bare bones.  Its before and after shots are shown here.  I don't really expect them to rebound but I'm giving them a chance rather than replanting the containers from scratch.

This Prostanthera ovalifolia (aka mint bush) planted in the back garden shows you what it should look like.  It's one of my favorite plants.

I finally got around to planting the 18 tiny 2-inch succulents I received by mail order before the heatwave.  Three Echeveria agavoides prolifera are shown here, along with an Agave 'Blue Glow' pup I'd saved last year.  The rest were used to fill in a variety of empty spots.

In the north-side garden, I'm still holding off on cleaning up the large Phormium 'Apricot Queen' that was scorched during our recent heatwave but I took steps to protect my whale's tongue agave.

I realized that my largest and oldest Agave ovatifolia was in danger of having sticky persimmon fruit fall into its crevices from the tree branches directly above it (as shown in the left photo).  I cut several branches hanging above the Agave, sacrificing the unripe fruits. 

I lost 10 persimmons in the process.  I don't personally care for the fruit but my neighbors do.

I've started tidying up the back garden but I've little to show for it other than some cuttings so far.

All my Arctotis look shabby at summer's end but they're perennial in my climate, if somewhat short-lived.  I've already cut the 'Pink Sugar' plants down to the ground but I took some cuttings as a backup.

I haven't done much with the south-side garden yet either beyond pruning away the worst of the dead foliage on Coprosma 'Plum Hussey'.

Before and after photos of the tall Coprosma are shown above

The pruning looks more severe from the back

The cooler temperatures this past week have raised my spirits despite the damage summer's heat has inflicted on my garden.  I'll be chipping away at my other projects well into November.  I got another energy boost yesterday when I saw these:

My Proteas are about to bloom!  These are both Protea neriifolia.  The one on the left is 'Claire' and the one on the right is 'Pink Ice' but at the moment they look close to identical to me.

All material © 2012-2024 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party