Each Little World

IVOM: The perfect vase

Some vases are perfect because they are just right for short-stemmed blooms.

If you're lucky, they're equally good for long-stemmed beauties. 

But the very best vases look perfect even when they don't have any flowers. 

I love the glass vases by Richard Jones of Studio Paran in Madison. Given that I have three more of his vases in different shapes, sizes and colors, you could probably say I am addicted.

Jones is closing his studio and has been slowly selling his stock; first online and now Saturday afternoons in person at his shop. 

I bought this one knowing it was unlike any of my other black and silver vases. Mark suggested I display them as a group without flowers. I was thrilled he said that as that is exactly what I was thinking of doing!

I added a pot of Cyclamen to turn it into a Christmas display. Though I admit the flower color looked much more red in the shop than in my living room. Still, I am happy with my new purchase and love the group as a holiday display. 

In a vase on Wednesday

I always bring in the last good-looking foliage and seedpods to make an autumn arrangement. This time I forgot about watering it after the first few days. So I remade it as a study in brown. 

Have a pleasant Thanksgiving. I'm not the cook this year, so it will be very pleasant for us. 

I'm back!

Thank you for checking in with me while I attempted to solve my problem loading photos. Fingers still crossed, but it seems to be working. 

IVOM: Halloween

Whenever I get bored, I change up the items on top of this pair of Chinese wine tables. Or on the glass shelves we added on the bottom to provide more display space. Recently I wanted something to punch up this room and bought this pair of lamps at a new antique mall in town. Mark is less than thrilled with them because they limit the size and number of pieces of art that can be put on the wall behind them — which is why I saved the pair of smaller scale lamps that had been residing here. 

I put this grouping of objects out at the beginning of October. I wanted something that felt like Halloween but didn't include typical items. This group showcases a Japanese incense burner, a squash-shaped box of unknown origin and a Chinese ceramic piece that was likely used as a roof decoration. 

I immediately fell in love with this piece when I saw it at an art show at a friend's farm the summer of 2021. It's an actual dried pumpkin covered with lead bullets and sculpt metal. It's called "Pumpkin Mine" and is a comment on the marine mines used to blow up ships. I'm still not sure why I am so drawn to it. I'm not a violent person and neither is the artist — a friend — who made it. But it certainly has that eerie Halloween feel. 

This big wooden bowl full of Honey Locust pods comes out every autumn. When we first lived here, we rarely got pods from our three trees. In recent years, we are buried in them. We fill a lot of big bags with them and send them off to the county dump. 

As a means of turning these lemons into lemonade, I saved the longest, shiniest, most velvety pods for display. They live in this bowl year-round in the basement except for their month in the sun every October.

IVOM: Fall gatherings

These arrangements are from the last couple of weeks when I've been pulling out vases that haven't seen the light of day for a long time. This is a contemporary Chinese ceramic container, but it is not glazed inside. I stuffed a plastic bottle into the opening to hold water without leaking. 

A number of years ago I fell in love with the seedheads of Hosta flowers when I saw them in a bouquet a friend had composed. Now I always let a number of the flowers get to this stage. In fact, these pods were the impetus for the display. 

I like these Sedum flowers best before they open and turn pink. 

I think I should have added a couple more stems of Sedum flowers at differing heights. This feels like a bouquet that is not quite finished. But I didn't want to denude the Sedum plant — which is in a very visible location — by cutting more flowers. 

I moved this large wood fired stoneware pot to use the pedestal as a staging area for photographing the vase. Afterwards the vase went to the dining table where we could enjoy it with every meal. The painting is an old one of Mark's.

This Japanese bronze container is one I often use for bouquets with toad lilies (Tricyrtis). I had a stunning display of Tricyrtis hirta this year, but it was in the wrong location and needed to be divided and moved. So I clipped all the flowering stems to bring indoors. 

I added clippings from an unknown Heuchera with pink flowers and some stems of Anemone hybrida 'Max Vogel.' The Anemone gave up the ghost in 24 hours, so I need to do some research to see if there is a way to make it last as a cut flower. 

I cut a big stem of hardy Begonia, along with some of the beautiful foliage of this plant. This is another case where I needed a couple more large flowering Begonia stems but didn't have any. I added what was available but I was still unhappy with the hole on the left side of the bouquet (first photo).

The toad lilies go on and on and are one of my favorite flowers to bring indoors. Luckily I still have a number of them in bud and bloom to continue to enjoy indoors and out. 

To see what others have put in a vase today, visit Rambling in the Garden who hosts this long-running meme. 

Remembering Ravilious

During the Second World War, the War Artists Advisory Committee in the U.K hired 300 artists to cover the conflict. On this date in 1942, a plane on a mission off the coast of Iceland crashed into the sea, killing its pilot and 39-year-old passenger, artist Eric Ravilious.  He was the first official war artist to die in active service. I fell in love with Ravilious's work the first time I saw it. He was an illustrator, painter, printmaker and designer of commercial images like the one on this mug. 

This is one of a pair of large cups I have that were produced by Wedgewood to celebrate the coronation of Elizabeth the 2nd, the current Queen. Ravilious originally designed this one for her father's coronation and it was reissued in this colorway for Elizabeth. 

I'm not usually a fan of pink and yellow combinations but I think it works in this design. At this time of year, however, my garden doesn't as offer quite as many choices for pink and yellow blooms as it does in the spring. Still I found more than I expected. 

The provenance of the cup is printed on the bottom. 

The two books pictured are "Bawden, Ravilious and the Artists of Great Bardfield," edited by Gill Saunders and Malcom Yorke and "Long Live Great Bardfield: An Autobiography" by Tirzah Garwood, the wife of Eric Ravlious.

The first is a big, illustrated history of the group of artists who lived and worked Great Bardfield in England and the second is one of many superb books by the great Persephone Press in Bath, England. I am a huge fan of their books and have quite a long shelf full of them. In fact, they are listed as their own category on this blog!

IVOM: Are flowers necessary?

"Are Flowers Necessary?" is the title of an upcoming garden walk at Olbrich Botanical Gardens. I've been thinking about signing up for it, but haven't decided if I really need it. My most recent bouquets suggest perhaps not. 

The leaves of Hardy Begonia (B. grandiflora) are green on the front and red on the underside. They look perfect in a vase all by themselves. They're best in the garden in a location where the foliage gets raking sunlight that emphasizes these colors. 

This is another vases by local artist Richard Jones of Studio Paran. Love that red stripe.

The table runner and tray are still in place on our table. But this time, they're the backdrop for my trio of Heath vases. 

Carex siderosticha 'Variegata' with a stem of Euphorbia 'Ascot Rainbow' centers the display.

Foliage from Heuchera 'Pinot Gris' and a stem of Caryopteris divaricata 'Snow Fairy'

Astrantia 'Vanilla Gorilla' leaf with a Heuchera flower stem.

There are enough flowers in the garden that I could have easily made an arrangement with them. But I've definitely enjoyed skipping the flowers to concentrate on foliage. 

IVOM: Heuchera extravaganza

Every summer I wait impatiently for this unknown Heuchera to bloom. I have more than a ?dozen clumps of it scattered along the backside of the driveway border, where no one sees them unless they go exploring. 

This is the only Heuchera I grow that is so floriferous I can pick a bouquet of just these flowers. They stems are tall and the blossoms are large and intensely colored. I added a few stems of Ninebark (Physocarpus) 'Amber Jubilee' that I'd just pruned for a little contrast. 

I plunked it all in one of my many beautiful glass vases by Richard Jones of Studio Paran. 

If you slowly rotate the vase, the pattern of silver rectangles change in size and relationship. 

Both the front and back of the vase have a thin stripe of red running vertically through the design. 

The Ninebark foliage echoes the wider orange band that circles the neck of the vase.

To see what other gardeners have put in a vase today, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this long running meme. 

IVOM: Simple solutions

I don't have a cutting garden.That rarely is a problem as there are usually enough flowers to cut a few without leaving a hole. The garden, however, is in a lull at the moment. Astilbes, Daylilies and Veronicastrums are all blooming but they look too perfect in the garden to cut them. Instead I stuck a stem of Amber Glow Ninebark that needed trimming into a "vase." I enjoyed it enough that I added two more vases and more greenery. 

The "vases" are empty bottles from Fever Tree Elderflower Tonic. I've been washing the paper labels off and saving them until I had enough to put in a row down the table. Now they have nothing on them except for their raised logo of a tree. I actually have 6 of them; enough to  make a long line of them down the table should I ever have a dinner party again. 

I didn't want to just set them on the bare table so I found this old paper-covered tray to use as a base. I set it on a runner so it wouldn't scratch the table top. Not the fanciest display but it's held its looks for over a week. I think I will wander around the garden this morning and see what i can fine to replace this group of stems. 

To see what others have put in a vase today, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this long-running meme. 

IVOM: Stewartia pseudocamellia

We planted our Stewartia 22 years ago in an area where we kept adding another unusual tree. We assumed some would die but no one did. Last year we had to take out one of them  as they were crowding each other. The Stewartia stayed, even though we can only see it when we go looking for it.

We usually discover it's blooming when we find its flowers on the ground. As I was cleaning them up, I set aside the most recently fallen ones to take indoors.

When I float Hellebores, I always pack the bowl full of blooms. With Stewartia, I think fewer flowers look more elegant. 

The central "poppy seeds" make this flower perfect for my favorite speckled dark brown bowl.

Last winter we took out an old cherry tree that was shading the corner where the Stewartia grows. Hoping that more light will cause a few blooms to form on the lower branches so we can enjoy them before they fall to the ground.