Each Little World

In a vase any day

Just to remind you of my holiday treatment of the fireplace mantle: A beaded Christmas tree and a pair of votive lights and i called it done.

The flowers that were on the dining table during the holidays took a long time to fade.

I decided to enjoy their slow demise by moving them to the mantle and adding a dried fern leaf that nicely matched the browning flowers.

Mark enjoyed the Foo dogs so much that I added them to the opposite end of the mantle. There were just enough bits of teal in his painting that the dogs and the vase seemed appropriate partners for the painting.

I replaced the flowers went I went grocery shopping recently to complement my new painting, which we'd swapped for the little girl's portrait.

Mark decided that the new painting perfectly melded his painting with the textile filling the wall space next to the fireplace.

This is a closeup of the top of the beautiful Miao baby carrier. The Miao people are one of many different Chinese ethnic groups.

Miserable weather, miserable news. Thus I am sitting opposite the fireplace to enjoy the view before I lose myself in a book. Hope you are all managing to survive this scary end of Trump's administration. Definitely sending thoughts and prayers to Joe and Kamala.

Looking back at the garden year

I usually do a January post about the highs and lows of the prior year in my garden. I started to write one weeks ago, but could not really bear to think that much about the last year. But Kris Peterson, who gardens in southern California and blogs at Late to the Garden Party, inspired me with her recent post highlighting lovely moments in her garden each month. As she pointed out, our gardens were our refuge this past year. I don't think I've spent more time or enjoyed myself more in my garden than in 2020. Here are some of my favorite moments.

JANUARY: This month is almost always cold and snowy in Wisconsin, so my gardening is virtual. Most mornings I've started the day with dreamy stories and photos of houses and gardens via emails from the UK version of House and Garden magazine. Below: The Jinny Blom designed garden at Chalkland Farm in winter via HG magazine.

FEBRURARY: I began gardening in order to have flowers and herbs to put in a vase. I am especially drawn to containers, like this one, that look equally good with or without flowers. This was one of the last purchases I made before lockdown. 

MARCH: Our delightful pair of ducks flew in right on schedule; a moment of normalcy in this very unusual year. 

APRIL: I was delirious as each new plant pushed up in the spring and spent a good chunk of the month on my stomach attempting to capture all of it with a camera. Erythronium 'White Splendor'

MAY: I spent much of this last gardening year pulling out weeds that had become "groundcvoers" and replacing them with an assortment of native Carex species. Flowers of Halesia tetraptera (Carolina Silverbell) have fallen on the Carex in this photo. That tree came out late in the summer but I'll always remember this moment. 

JUNE: It was a glorious year for Peonies of every type. 

JULY: One of my favorite views is this foliage grouping on the slope below the Tea House. Clockwise from left front: Hosta 'Spritzer,' Cornus 'Golden Shadows,' Adiantum pedatum,  Tiarella 'Running Tapestry,' Carex Divulsa, Brunnera macrophylla 'Alexander's Great,' Deinanthe caerula and Heuchera 'Autumn Haze'  

AUGUST: My last haul from the late, and very great local nursery, Flower Factory. I can barely imagine where i will find such big beautiful plants, both the every day and the unusual, in the future. We have many good local nurseries but nothing quite like David and Nancy Nedvek's Flower Factory.

SEPTEMBER: At last my hardy Begonia is finally big enough to make a stunning statement. 

OCTOBER: Our gorgeous new deck, made of Ipe wood, was finished in time for us to sit outdoors and enjoy it until the snow arrived. 

NOVEMBER: An autumn filled with intense fall color on perennials, shrubs, trees and grasses. 

DECEMBER: This was the scene in the garden in early December and it looked the same after a late December storm. Very likely it will continue to look this way until March or April. But I am not going to think about that. 

IVOM: The un-Christmas display

A number of pre-COVID months ago, one of my favorite local artists, Richard Jones of Studio Paran, closed up his glass studio to my great disappointment. Thus I was thrilled when he sent out an email saying that his website was still up and was featuring all of the treasures he'd found as he cleaned out his studio. I treated myself to this unmatched grouping of a pair of candlesticks and a vase. It graced the table for all of our meals — regardless of the changes in table settings — all last week. 

Richard's containers are beautiful with nothing in them. I thought that this one could easily be overwhelmed by its contents, so I opted for just two flowers; different species — Hydrangea and Chrysanthemum — but the same color.

Our Christmas Day dinner featured blue and white dishes and accoutrements. I added this pair of intensely colored Foo dogs to the mix to make it less traditional.

This turned out to be Mark's favorite combination; a total surprise to me. We continue to enjoy it on a clean table ready for a new week of holiday dinners.

Christmas pleasures

Bursts of sunshine

A new painting: "Arkansas Blacks" by Jonathan Wilde. I bought that apple variety at the farmers market this summer. 

I baked two kinds of cookies, candied orange peel with an 1801 recipe and dipped them, apricots and walnut-stuffed dates in chocolate. It was deliciously enjoyable with no deadlines for parties or shipping or anything but our enjoyment. 

Best wishes for a pleasant and safe holiday for all of you and your families.

IVOM: A Thanksgiving arrangement

I posted a version of this foliage display on October 26th, noting I had actually put it together on October 14th. It's now more than a month later and it's still looking good enough to use on our Thanksgiving dinner table — with a bit of sprucing up. 

I added a number of Bergenia leaves which had started to get burnished bronze and red out in the garden. The rabbits tend to munch these during the summer, but they return in the fall and are untouched now.

I decided to make one last foray around the garden as the bouquet still looked a bit blah even with the Bergeinia foliage. The addition of variegated Arum italicum foliage and yellow Epimedium leaves definitely brightened things up, along with an 'Autumn Brilliance' fern frond. 

Epimedium 'Waterfall' is the only one of my many Epimediums to turn this wonderful buttery color with dark edges. 

I clipped this Maidenhair fern frond when it was a flat fan. In the house everything has delicately curled up.

I only grow Arum italicum 'Ghost,' a plant that appears in the autumn when the weather cools down and pops up again when the snow melts. There are other varieties with different degrees of patterning that I continue to lust after. I've never been able to buy one as they are always sold out as soon as I seem to discover them in on-line nurseries. 

The wonky flowers on star fruit (Penthorum seloides) get better and better as the days go by.

Hope you have a pleasant and safe holiday.

IVOM: It's official

Now that it's November it's time to acknowledge that there is little left in the garden to bring indoors. That means it's time to bring out the old favorites to highlight this season. The temperatures in the last week have hit 70°F. or above every day; so it looks like November but definitely does not feel like it at all.  

Though I would never grow this plant as it's invasive, I love it for autumn decorating. Someone at my local farmers market always has some stems each fall. 

This tiny teapot is too small to actually use but too sweet to keep hidden away. We use the tiny cups now and again for sake.

One of the real joys for me this autumn has been the lack of pods on our honey locust trees. Last year I filled a number of big bags with them in an endless cleanup process that went right into spring. 

I hate picking up the pods but I love the look and texture of them, ranging from lacquered to velvet. I saved the biggest and best of them a few years ago and just bring out this wooden bowl filled with them when I want a hit of rich autumn color.

IVOM: Outside in

I brought most to the plants that have been outdoors in the garden into the front hall not long ago. They stayed in the hall a few days while I made space for these stalwarts in the living room: a Boston fern, rosemary, Begonia and Orchids. Once they were taken care of I could play with this lovely little ornamental cabbage. It makes a perfectly sized partner for the quirky pumpkin I got at one of the local farmers markets.  

Nothing fancy but I am smitten with the colors and textures of this impromptu grouping. 

I picked this pumpkin thinking it would echo the peeling paint of the big Lohan statue at the other end of this table. 

Alas, the vendor wrote the weight and price on top of the pumpkin. So I put it where we would be able to enjoy the display but not close enough to note that distraction. 

Every time I look at this little cabbage, I remind myself that I need to start growing these kind of ornamentals in the garden all season, rather than picking them up late in the game. 

IVOM: Nearing the end

With the weather getting colder and windy, I decided not to wait to cut some fall foliage while it still was suitable for a vase; actually a low bowl with 3 different size metal ikebana frogs in the bottom.

This annual arrangement tends to be my last one of the growing season. I am endlessly fond of playing with an armload of foliage, thus at this stage of the game, if I cut it I use it. I wasn't  sure how long the golden Cinnamon ferns would hold up; but they were too beautiful not to use. I put this together on Wednesday, Oct. 14.

There were still plenty of lacy leaves left on the assorted Thalictrums to cut. 

I'm not sure what fern this is, but it had curled and dried in this elegant fashion in an earlier bouquet. When that arrangement was discarded, I moved the fern into this new display.

The Hakonechloa grass add a touch of lightness and brightness, but it dried up within a very short time.

The Cinnamon ferns crinkled up quickly but they paired nicely with the dried Hydrangea flowerhead. 

Cimicifugas, with their long wands of tiny pink or white blossoms, have a delicate air in flower that is quite a contrast from their dramatic purple-black seedheads.

Hosta flowers also produce unexpectedly dramatic seedheads as these green clumps demonstrate.

A week later, I added some golden Thalictrum foliage to go with the yellowing Hosta leaves and ferns. 

A few days later, I decided it was time to pull out the dying green and brown ferns and the Hakonechloa grass that looks like string draped in the bouquet.

Ten days after I put this grouping together, I added some fresh greens to perk it up.

A few stems of Oreganum l'Herenhausen' repeated the dark coloring of the Cimicifuga seedheads. 

The majority of Epimedium foliage is still green but I found these bronzed leaves on the E. 'Lilac Fairy.'

Almost all of the Hostas in the garden are visibly suffering from drought followed by cold and wind. But the foliage of Hosta 'El Nino' was in almost perfect condition. Thalictrum 'Black Stockings,' a June bloomer for me, is the only one with beautiful foliage still standing. 

I'm hoping I will find more foliage in the garden to keep refreshing this bouquet, but the next four nights our temperatures are dropping down into the 20°F., so I will just have to wait and see what happens.

In a Vase on Monday: Yellow Tricyrtis

I clipped more Toad lilies on Friday afternoon before the temperatures took a dive. The foliage on Tricyrtis hirta 'Lemon Twist' was hard hit by drought and heat at the end of the summer and was pretty crisp and brown. I removed most of it, though perhaps one might let it alone to echo the brown speckles on the inside of the flowers. 

The creamy white stems are the flowers of Heucher 'Brownies'.

I have a love/hate relationship with this toad lily because it always seems to have foliage issues by the time the flowers open.

But the flowers are so large and lovely, that last autumn I spread the plants out so I'd have twice as many this year. Worked beautifully: Twice the flowers and twice the crunchy brown leaves!

One stem of Tricyrtis macrantha, yellow bell toad lily, was finally opening so I clipped it and brought it indoors. Then I made Date and Nut Bread from Frances Palmer's just-published book, "Life in the Studio: Inspiration and Lessons on Creativity."

The flower and the slice of bread were both enjoyed by this gardener on a chilly afternoon. 

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: 10.15.2020

Since our weather forecast predicts frost tonight and potentially a week of rain beginning on Saturday, I went outdoors yesterday afternoon with the garden clippers to see what was still in bloom. Autumn Crocus and Toad lilies were the only flowers left in the garden, though they were surrounded by beautiful foliage everywhere I looked. I brought an armful of Toad lilies inside for a vase. This grouping includes Tricyrtis formosana, T. hurta and T. 'Miyazaki'.

Even if most of these buds don't open, I always enjoy the look of them all puffed up, ready and waiting. 

Tricyrtis 'Lightning Strike' has dramatic striped foliage.