cut flowers

In a Vase on Monday — still cheerily waiting for winter…

While our nights are now close to freezing temps, we still haven’t hit the hard 32 here at our house yet.  My dad was here today and returned the vase from the bouquet of garden flowers I took them a few weeks ago.

Since it was a beautiful, sunny day here (60F) and there are still blooms in the garden, I refilled the vase and sent it back again – with flowers!

Today’s arrangement included lion’s tail, coneflowers, indigo spires salvia, celosia, rosemary and duranta seeds.

To see what other gardeners are putting in their vases, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.

Bringing in cut flowers for indoor sunshine, but leaving the heat outdoors

You wouldn’t believe it’s fall here in Central Texas.  The temperature today is supposed to be a whopping 95 degrees.  They keep promising us a cool front this weekend.  I’m not holding my breath!

Since I’m so busy with work and procrastinating on two designs, I decided to venture into the garden and see how I could waste some more time.  Ah ha!  I’ll pick some of these lovely flowers to bring inside to enjoy while I am chained to my desk.

Many things that I cut back in early August are blooming again, but most of these have bloomed all summer long.  This bouquet has echinacea, duranta, esperanza, some flowering basil and some Klondike cosmos.  The cosmos were all ripped out mid-summer and the remaining seeds have germinated and given me a brand new, monstrous crop.  They are very unruly, but I like them anyway.  I think of them like popsicle sunshine on a stick!

I was inspired to do this after reading Late to the Garden Party’s post for In a Vase on Monday, a meme started by Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.  I’m late to the meme, but I still wanted some flowers for my desk.  Better late than never, right?

Have you been bringing in any flowers from your garden?  Don’t you want to pop out there with the scissors and bring something beautiful from your garden indoors?

Too much of a good thing!

This week we were blessed with three quenching inches of rain. It came with a vengeance, bringing with it clashes of thunder and bolts of lightning too intense to ignore, even at 3 a.m.

Living in perpetual drought (Okay- I exaggerate just a smidge, but not much!), we welcomed the storm and the resulting drink. But today, I saw the flip side of all that rain at once. Just like our tomato skins will split with too much surprise moisture, my first crop of plums burst at the seams from the rain.

Let me tell you, though — it was like nectar of the Gods when I ate the rest of it! It’s a little small and a little too tart yet, but I LOVE that I have plums. I thought this was an ornamental tree until Dakota (the dog) ate her first fallen plums a few weeks ago.

Then I had to cut back the monstrous overgrowth of Wine Cups that have obliterated the rock pathway and begun taking over the lawn. All that rain just fed the monster!
So, THEN, I had to go through the beds and get some cutting flowers for make a lovely posey for the kitchen.
That makes me happy. Who said you can have too much of a good thing?

What they’re there for!


So, I made a little bed for a cutting garden last fall. In it went a Carefree Beauty (Katy Road) Rose, Indigo Spires, Cosmos, Zinnias, Daisies, Bachelor’s Buttons, Larkspur, Lion’s Tail, Gladiolas, Bluebonnets, Lamb’s Ears, Lilies, Clematis, Morning Glories and a variegated Agave Americana. A few of the seeds didn’t come up, like the Daisies, but most did, in various states of growth and fullness. But in my desire to have a pretty bed, I’ve been hesitant to cut flowers!

Today, with the ominous winds whipping about and a storm forecast, I thought, I should bring a few of these in to enjoy them before they get beaten about.

So I did.

And, for my Day #4 of the 29-Day Giving Challenge, I took a bunch to a good friend. (You can click on the 29-Day link to the right to learn more about this cool movement.)

I’m so glad I brought them in for me, and so glad I shared some, too. Garden happiness indoors tonight.

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