Each Little World

In a vase on Tuesday

I quickly put these vases together Sunday afternoon as rain was forecast for Monday and a high of 90°F on Tuesday. I knew that one/two punch might easily end both of these blooms. 

In a vase on Friday

A thunderstorm with possible tornados was forecast for Saturday for our area. So I cut a lot of flowers for the house, knowing they would be a mess if we did get a big storm. We got .57" (1.44 cm.) of rain and the next day the temperature shot up to 83°F. (28.33°C.), so I was glad I grabbed some blooms at the optimum moment. 

Muscari pardoxum, an 1880 heirloom variety in the rear vase; Muscari ''Valerie Finnis; in the foreground with Brunnera.

Muscari pardoxum flowers are a very dark blue with pale yellow interiors visible as they open. 

This rogue Muscari, colored bright purple, is most likely M. botryoides.

This vase is fun to use because you can put a different flower in each opening and it has different illustrations on the front and back. 

Tulips demand to be brought indoors where they can be enjoyed up close. 

Tulip 'Rococo' has petals highlighted with purple, yellow and green. 

I bought this vase when Madison's Studio Paran closed. I knew those red lines would be perfect with Tulips. 

In southern Wisconsin, Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalus) typically bloom for Mother's Day. This year they missed that date by a week. 

They deserve a special vase like this old Mercury glass container and just the right foliage accompaniment. 

Despite their later appearance, I opted to display them with a photo of my mother, myself and two of my sisters. I believe my mom may be pregnant with my youngest sister in this photo. 

IVOM: Rescued from the weather

Our dangerously low overnight temperatures mean that all my special plants are being protected with bins and boxes. Tonight looks like our last day with a freezing overnight low temp, 32°F.

I have been holding all the plants that have arrived by mail or curbside pickup at local nurseries in a wheelbarrow and boxes so they can be quickly brought indoors at night and returned outside during the day time hours. But yesterday, I gave up and brought everyone inside mid-afternoon when it started to snow. It came down heavily enough that it began to stick to the deck and covered the roof of the fence across the back garden.

The living room is the holding spot for herbs and a few perennials.

The wheelbarrow in the garage has Epimediums, Tricyrtis and Veronicastrums.

The front hall is packed with everything else . . .

including this Rhodie atlanticum that has started to bloom.

Luckily I took advantage of more pleasant weather Saturday afternoon and clipped enough flowers to put together an assortment of vases. 

This Tulip and the Muscari grow in full sun in gravelly soil in the traffic island bed in the street. I plant and maintain this little bed which is directly in front of my house.

I have a trio of white pitchers that Ipurchased because I loved their shapes and thought they would be perfect as vases. But photographing them as a group is always difficult, between finding the room to pose all three together and enough light to show their contents in their true colors.

They are filled with Daffodils, Tulip sylvestnis, Epimedium, Fritillaria, Lamium and a Peony.

I opened the window shutters to increase the light! 

A pair of Tulip 'Schoonoord' circle Paeonia japonica with Hyacinth 'City of Haarlem' in the rear. 

To see what other gardeners have put in a vase today, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this lively and lovely Monday meme. 

IVOM: Clippings

The Hellebore leaves are full up and covering the fading flowers. But I can never just cut those stems and toss the flowers onto the compost pile; thus this vase. Most of these blossoms are H. 'New York Night'. I always thought the color and the name were the essence of big city sophistication. These days it just sounds doleful.  

The tall greenish flower with red edges is H. "Jade Tiger' and the shorter green blooms are H. niger.

But it is the two-toned grape hyacinths (Muscari latifolium) that bring it all to life. 

We have a rabbit family living under our deck and my attempts to trap them have not yielded anything. So I cut these tulips as soon as I saw them to save them from the bunnies. I don't know when I've brought tulips into the house that they did not suddenly open widely. So this vase this morning is much more restrained than I expected it to be. 

Linking to Rambling in the Garden, who hosts this most enjoyable Monday meme where you can see all sorts of spring garden flowers in vases. 

Happy May Day!

Dutchman's Breeches, Violets, Hepatica, a few Primroses and a Heuchera leaf.

In a vase for Easter

Our weather the last few days has been very changeable with sun, rain, wind and snow showers putting an end to some of my early spring blossoms. Luckily my Easter display didn't need anything but a pair of small bouquets. This one features a Trillium sessile in bud, an unknown Hellebore and Iris reticulata 'George'.

I have a lot of Hellebores in my garden but many were planted before I started paying attention to their names. Helleborus niger 'Sunset Group' — the white flower — is the only one in this bouquet I can name. This is a wonderful variety with short, sturdy stems that hold the flowers outward! The old foliage lies flat so the flowers are visible. 

I decided to do my usual Easter display as a way to make things look normal, even if life doesn't feel normal at the moment. I am probably the only person who adds a vase of dried Chinese lantern pods to a spring arrangement.

But those orange pods look great with my collection of carrots. Mark is a carrot fancier so I always gave him a non-edible version in his easter basket. No Easter baskets this year as I totally forgot about the holiday the last time I was at the grocery store.

My 1970s sock bunny came from a wonderful little shop called "Home Made Goods" in Chicago. 

I love felt creations and have a variety of veggies as well as this beautifully-dressed bunny babe. 

I once almost bought a winter coat that was bright yellow and embroidered all over, which probably explains why I am so taken with this bunny. 

Hope you have a safe and healthy weekend.

IVOM: Snowdrops

For the first time, I've had a few actual groups of snowdrops; enough that one can see them without being nose to the ground. This is the wonderful G. 'Magnet.' The flower swings from the long pedicle in the breeze.

It turned out that I have enough varieties to put a different one in each little vase; though some are good sized clumps and others are only a few stems. 

G. nivalis 'Viridipice' has green tips while G. Dionysus is a double; it has fewer inner segments than others in the Greatorex series (info only snowdrop nerds care about).

A pair of G. 'Magnet' snowdrops about to take flight, with G. woronowii — with its big fat leaf — below. In the garden, even a small clump of this variety makes a statement because of the size of its glossy foliage.

G. 'Dionysus' (left) and G. nivalis 'Flore Pleno' are distinctly different double varieties, both in color and number of petals. 

Given all the bad news surrounding us, it is a treat to be able to find such small pleasures in the garden.

The first day of the rest of our dramatically changed lives . . .

I have a friend whose birthday is on Friday, the 13th; it's always been an upbeat date for me as a result. Though last Friday was less so than usual.

For starters, we stayed home from UW Health/Sports Medicine/Fitness Center aka our gym. All classes were cancelled as of Friday and the gym suggested that anyone over 60 years of age (us!) should stay home. Given that it is a space filled with seniors, it is going to be very quiet for the foreseeable future. 

We spent the morning keeping up with the news and all the local cancellation notices. Then we went outdoors. Mark walked and took photos while I stayed in the garden, raking and doing initial cutting back as spring seems to be upon us. 

I took a stack of books off suspended holds at the library, so I will be set for reading material. Sent for an absentee ballot for the spring election and bought some flowers to raise our spirits. Yes, I did pick the flowers to go with Mark's 1982 painting of the corner of Park St. and West Wash. It's a big piece and has been languishing in the basement for enough years that it was time to let it shine again. 

Stay safe, stay healthy.

IVOM: At last . . .

I have been waiting for months to pick a bouquet, no matter how small or simple, from my own garden. So it's definitely an "at last" kind of moment, even though it is more correctly the first bouquet of the 2020 gardening season. There is still a lot of snow in my garden of a depth that had me wearing my "Wellies" in order to see what was blooming.

The Galanthus nivalis 'Flore Pleno' (below) are on the south side of the house by the basement wall and are always the first to make an appearance. 

Luckily G. viridapice had an id tag visible so I was able to properly identify them. 

This group was planted close enough to the G. viridapice that I was assuming they were the same variety. The green tip makes me think I am wrong and that it is likely G. 'Jonathan'.

G. woronii is pushing up across the path. It should open this week with the warmer weather that is forecast. 

I picked a few G. nivalis 'Flore Pleno' and a leaf of Arum Italicum 'Ghost' to bring indoors for a Monday vase. I could not resist playing with scale by putting the vase on a white shelf in front of this photo of the back of a few old houses and gardens

The only downside to the flowers of G. nivalis 'Flore Pleno' is that you have to get below them to enjoy their double inner petals. 

i'm delighted to re-join all of you who have been sharing your vases each week at Rambling in the Garden. 

A vase on Monday: No flowers needed!

The moment I saw this vase at Anthropologie I knew it was coming home with me. Though it has held flowers on many occasions, it really looks its best just being itself. That huge red flower exploding from the teal vase needs no competition to create a floral statement. 

The red bag held a holiday treat. It was such a lovely size and color that I decided to display it rather than stashing it to hold a gift for someone else. After I added the red bag, I needed one more item to fill that empty space on the red tray.

I found the wire full of coral at the local antiques mall; buying it with the intent of using it in some kind of jewelry project. At the moment, I like the way it looks as an object in its own right. 

I pulled the vase out into daylight for a moment so you could see its true tone. Taking a photo in the red room is always a color challenge.