In a Vase on Monday: Jewels

…and fluffy too, and more!

We had over 36mm of rain yesterday, when I prepared this vase, more than we had in the whole of August, so conditions for choosing and cutting blooms were not the best. Aster Symphyotrichum ‘Little Carlow’ was my go-to plant this week, quickly joined by white contrasts of Antirrhinum ‘Liberty Classic White’, annual Scabious ‘Snow Maiden’, Limonium ‘Iceberg’ and reflowering spikes of Verbascum chiaxii, with added foliage of polemonium. I am not keen on asters generally, seeing them, like chrysanthemums, as ugly lanky plants, but can tolerate ‘Little Carlow’ which is shorter and a little better behaved.

Please be assured that the title is not intended to reflect how I feel about the vase, but more of an acknowledgment that a pink and white combination always makes me think of ‘coconut ice’, and I am very partial to coconut in cakes and confectionery although not in things like coconut water or any other drink, alcoholic or otherwise. Coconut ice, if you haven’t heard of it, is an old-fashioned confection made from coconut, sugar and milk, one half coloured pink, the other remaining white, and no doubt far too sweet for my taste these days.

The garden is definitely on the turn, but there are still treasures to be found. Helichrysum ‘Bright Rose’, for example, has flowered prolifically this year but, with all the other material, I had not cut it very often and the plants were covered in blooms that were not quite buds but didn’t look like spent flowers**. With little rain in August, it wasn’t as if they had ‘balled’ either but, whatever their status, I took advantage of their numbers and used them as a starting point for today’s Vase on Monday.

I have unashamedly but apologetically ‘borrowed’ the idea for today’s vase from last week’s contribution by Jenny of Zone Three Garden (sorry Jenny, and thanks!), in which she placed several stems of rudbeckia in a clear glass vase, held in place by aquarium pebbles. It made such a striking arrangement, the bare stems serving to emphasise its elegance.

My original thoughts for a post title ( ‘As Easy As…’) were thwarted when I realised the blue and white alphabet mug I planned to use as a vase was too small; several other similarly coloured vases were rejected for various reasons before I settled on this clear glass jar with its integral ‘cage’. A miniature bird cage, no doubt intended for a doll’s house, now serves as a satisfactory prop – someone must have left the cage open though, as the bird has flown…

I may well have created a vase on Monday with the title ‘Candy Girl’ before, but with Dahlia ‘Eye Candy’ as the main focal point that is what popped into my head, alongside lyrics of the Archies’ late 1960s song ‘Sugar Sugar’.

Well, I did it, got out our stepladder and climbed up to cut some of the mammoth sunflowers for today’s vase! Joining them are several stems of Rudbeckia ‘Cappucino’ which work brilliantly with the sunflowers as they are all on the same colour palette. The sunflowers, ‘Velvet Queen’ and ‘Earthwalker’, are both shades of copper, and the rudbeckia range from pure to two-tone copper in various coppery degrees.

There is so much material to choose from in the garden and there have been more than a few warming Monday vases of late, but I particularly wanted to include a couple of seed successes whilst the opportunity was still there. I have grown gomphrena from seed before, but with minimal success, so this year’s three plants (right) were par for the course, each bearing a single bloom. Although supposedly mixed colours, the only variety I could find at the time, all three are this fiery orangey-red. Emilia javanica ‘Irish Poet’ (left) is new to me and has been very much an eyecatcher since early June, with its tiny fluffy orange blooms. I shall certainly grow it again.

Three weeks ago I posted an ‘Armful For Julie’ on IAVOM, blooms scheduled for my retiring Pilates teacher but, thwarted by her illness, not given. After battling a nasty bout of Covid, her third and worst, she will be calling into our class tomorrow to say a belated goodbye to those who have known her a long time, so I am trying again and have created a slightly smaller armful of blooms to go with the vase that is wrapped and ready for her.

Not having used fiery colours for a few weeks, that is what I had in mind for today’s IAVOM contribution but, having picked a stem of Alstroemeria ‘Indian Summer’ as my starting point, I found there were no suitable blooms on Dahlias ‘David Howard’ or ‘Totally Tangerine’ to continue my planned theme. However, there was a single bloom on new Dahlia ‘Blyton Softer Gleam’, albeit looking slightly more yellow than the colour that attracted me in the catalogue, so this was snipped and the search continued.

Today’s boozy vase shares some elements with last week’s although lacks its fullness, containing less than an armful but more than a small posy, although with more time at my disposal it could have become more fulsome than it is. Having achieved my personal challenge of creating a vase with such a large number of blooms, I feel more confident of repeating the exercise and the garden is certainly proving the material to do so.