Each Little World

Speed the plow

I pulled my "plow" mug, out of the china cabinet during the winter and filled it with a gift of a bright yellow primrose. Now that my yellow primroses are actually in bloom in the garden and planting weather has finally arrived, it seems appropriate to share this traditional paen to farmers. It's a popular sentiment that was often printed on two-handled mugs with the words on one side and agricultural images on the reverse. It supposedly originated around the 15th century when it was a tune sung by laborers. Some versions spell it "plough."

Let the wealthy and great
Roll in splendor and state
I envy them not, I declare it
I eat my own lamb
My own chickens and hams
I shear my own fleece and I wear it

I have lawns, I have bowers
I have fruits, I have flowers
The lark is my morning alarmer
So jolly boys now
Here's God speed the plow
Long life and success to the farmer

There are all sorts of variations on this mug but my favorite may be Emily Sutton's sweetly colored print of a mug with more dramatic handles than mine has, but the same grouping of a couple surrounded by farm implements and animals.

Flowers at the CBG Fair

Though the Chicago Botanic Garden calls its annual event an "Antiques and GARDEN Fair" there were not as many items which could actually find a home outside in the garden as I would have liked. On the other hand, there were some wonderful indoor flower and garden displays that we greatly enjoyed. The theme of the show was “Color in the Garden: An Artist’s View.” 

As you can see from the picture below almost all the vendors also had some kind of flowers or plants included in their displays. I thought this was a particularly charming idea with its row of matched pots in ascending and descending sizes.

The artist below actually used dried flowers to create flat patterns that reminded me of Indian textiles with their bright colors and repeated motifs. The yellow one uses cosmos and the pink one at the right uses straw flowers. They are pressed paper thin in a hydraulic press. 

At the entrance to one of the tents were a pair of charming potager-style vegetable gardens by The Organic Gardner.

Craig Bergmann Landscape Design had one of their usual tour de force floral creations on display in the center of the tent. Can't you just fantasize doing this instead of the typical Christmas tree?

Maria Smithburg with Manfredini Landscape and Design created a dramatic tulip walkway with glossy red cylindrical planters. 

Depending on where you stood, the effect of the display constantly changed.

The containers made me think of those painted red trunks in the garden of Jack Lenor Larsen's Long House (below). They both have that same element of scale and drama.

You can see through the doors that the next garden display was equally dramatic but in a much more subtle way.

The space down the center of this gallery has been home to many incredible displays over the years, including this one by William Heffernan Landscapes.

I liked the combination of fantasy with the mirrored reflections and practicality with decorative squares of edible plants. I noticed that someone had added a small square of pink paper on the sign at the beginning of this garden with the hand-written notation "cherry trees." Clearly they'd been getting a lot of questions about the pink branches!

Since there were vendors in the hallways outside the conservatories we took advantage of the location and strolled through three different growing environments.

I've been reading a lot of interior design and decor books lately and the plants above and below both suggested color and texture combinations for paint and fabrics to my eye. 

My other posts on this event:

CBG Antiques and Garden Fair

CBG Antiques Fair: Inside the Tents 

Pine cone projects

Recent frost warnings made me realize it's time to gather up the garden "debris" that can be transformed into interior and exterior decor. I'm talking about pine cones and assorted pods from trees in my garden. Now's the time to collect them before they get beaten down and damaged by fall wind and rain — should we be lucky enough to finally get some rain. 

Though you can make elegant creations, I often take the lazy way and just pile my finds in containers like this glass jar (above) filled with pine cones. Come winter, I'll add bowls of paperwhites but for the moment the cones are my solitary decorative item in the front entrance.

I found the two images (directly above and below) last winter and saved them as inspiration for this fall when my trees star shedding cones. I paticularly like the long string of pine cones because you can use any color of ribbon — matching or contrasting with your house color outdoors or indoors in the room you want to decorate. Such an easy way to personalize a decorative item. 

You can see more photos of designer Dorothee Schumacher's home (below) here.

Here are some of the other ways I've used pine cones and assorted pods for fall decor:

Pods in the parlor

What to put in a fancy vase

Peony postscript

Given the interest in sustainable agriculture, it was only a matter of time before someone applied the concept to flowers. Now there's a book and a blog on the topic: "The 50 Mile Bouquet: Seasonal, Local and Sustainable Flowers." The blog is fascinating because it really makes you think about where flowers come from and who grows them. The site has a link to the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers where you can find the growers in your state and area if you want to join this particular "buy local" movement. There were 14 entries for Wisconsin.

But the most interesting tidbit I discovered was the video, "Empowered Peony Picking," featuring peony grower Joan Thorndike. As a professional peony grower, it's critical for Thorndike to pick peonies at the perfect moment to send them off to her floral customers. She picks them when the buds feel like marshmallows rather than marbles, which she talks about in the video. Thorndike said you can also cut peonies at the marshmallow bud stage and hold them in the fridge — wrapped in paper — for a month. Then you bring them out, recut the stems, put them in water and voila: you've got peonies.

So I tried it and it worked! Since this was my first attempt, I have a few kinks to work out but I will definitely do this again next year. I think my buds were not quite marshmallow-y enough when I cut them, so the flowers are smaller than they would be when blooming on the bush. But I cut these flowers on May 17th and they bloomed this afternoon, June 17th — literally after a month in the crisper bin in my refrigerator. 

I took them out on June 13th and by the afternoon of the 14th — when I hoped they would be ready for a party — they weren't doing much of anything. To get them out of the way during the party, I stuck them in the cool, dark garage and forgot all about them. Brought them back into the light and heat last night (the 16th) and recut them. This morning they were clearly opening and I had peonies by mid-afternoon. Too cool! 

Retreating to the garden

I've spent the time since Tuesday's election in the garden: the most restorative place I know. I've been weeding, watering and spreading the last of the Olbrich leaf mulch that's been sitting in a pile in the driveway. I have noticed, however, that I've been humming union songs as I work!

This weekend, when temperatures are expected to be in the 90s both days, I'll be indoors. But I've got a garden waiting for me there as well. Mark brought me this lovely new book, "Angie Lewin Plants and Places," from the Kohler Art Library on the UW-Madison campus. I love Lewin, which is easy to see if you type her name into the search box at the top of my blog. She's a British artist: painter, printmaker, fabric designer. Lewin finds both inspiration and imagry in weeds, wildflowers, and natural found objects like stones and feathers.

This is the first book I've seen that is actually about Lewin and her works as opposed to the garden books I have that she's illustrated. If you are an artist who looks to your garden for ideas and inspiration for your artwork, Lewin is a great example. She reduces the most complex flowers — Alliums and Queen Anne's Lace, for example — down to their essentials. Form, rather than scale or perspective, is her guiding principle which makes for very unusual compositions. 

What I find particularly satisfying about "Angie Lewin Plants and Places" is that it is large enough that you can study her work in detail. It also includes working drawings and paintings which I often find more interesting than the finished prints. If you are curious about Lewin's work, you can look at the book's pages on her website. You can order the book there as well. 

Similar bouquet, different dates

May 27, 2012: With temps slated to hit the 90 degree mark over the holiday weekend, I decided to bring some of the beautiful bounty of the garden indoors where we could enjoy it. I remembered creating a bouquet a few years ago in this same chartreuse vase that had peonies and the little stems of pink flowers from coral bells (Heuchera). When I went looking to see what I had done in that bouquet that I so fondly remembered, I discovered that I used a much more limited color palette. This time I added a 'Border Charm' yellow intersectional peony, some catmint, old German irises, bronze fennel and a bit of sprirea whose flowers haven't opened yet.

In addition to the color differences, I discovered that the flowers I used in my 2012 bouquet were blooming almost three weeks earlier than when I created the display below on June 15, 2009. Just one more sign of our accelerated spring! The pink peony is the same one in each picture but picked early below and near the end of the bloom sequence when the color is much paler above. And the Heuchera bells are from a different variety as well. The  daylily above is 'Cricket' while the species or lemon lily is on the left and Dumort's in the center below. The limey green flowers are Lady's Mantle and a few flowers of Geranium cantabrigiense 'Biokovo' are peeking out here and there.

Mark's favorite peony

There is nothing Mark likes better than flowers that are past their prime. When he goes out into the garden to take pictures for the blog, I never know what to expect. Same thing when it comes to cut flowers in arrangements in the house. He's taken dozens of shots of this white peony from Seneca Hill Perennials as it fades and the petals becomes more and more elongated and transparent. Since this is a young plant, I brought the second bloom indoors to enjoy as I didn't want the peony to use any energy setting seed. He won't let me toss the arrangment as there's lots more life to it from his photographic point of view!

Flowers in interiors

I splurged on Ngoc Mihn Ngo's new book, "Bringing Nature Home," as a treat for my birthday earlier this month. Though I have been pouring over its pictures, I've yet to actually use any images or techniques to create my own bouquets. Instead her lush little volume sent me to my garden bookshelves to see how my long-time favorite titles in this genre hold up. The answer is surprisingly well; or maybe it's just that they are such old friends they still look good to me and still have lots to say. 

"Flower Arranging," 1979: This book, published by Conran Octopus, features the work of six designers who are from the U.K. Of particular note are the bouquets of the late great British interior designer, David Hicks. I've always been a big fan of HIcks and these images focus on his "tablescapes," little arrangements of art, interesting objects and something from the garden. 

"Madderlake Flowers Rediscovered," 1985: Madderlake was the florist in the 1980s. Their designs featured lots of garden flowers but they also used lots of orchids and other exotics. Like Ngoc Mihn Ngo's book, the interiors where these bouquets appear are as captivating as the floral designs. Madderlake does fall and funk particularly well. The pictures are all as captivating as the flowers with many different photographers credited, including Shelia Metzner whose deco interiors jump off the page. Published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang whose art books in the 1980s were all noteworthy.

Alan Boehmer, one of the three talents behind Madderlake, worked at Chris Kerwin Antiques and Interiors in Madison for a time — giving us a link to Madderlake's big city glamour.

"Decorating with Flowers," 1990: This is the only book that concentrates on the work of one floral artist — Ronaldo Maia — with text by Denise Otis who was the editor of House and Garden at the time, and photos by Ernst Beadle. A big format book, even more extravagant than the previous two titles. This is the one book where I can point to floral creations that I copied right down to the containers. (And looking at these pictures makes me regret getting rid of some of those containers). Maia even inspired me enough that I planted specific flowers in my garden so I could replicate his arrangments with them. He is the first person I remember showing how to make a splash with carnations or gladioli. And the book has twenty-one pages of tips and how-to instructions, complete with step-by-step photos, making it a still valuable resource.

All three books are still available through on-line used book resources and I often see them in brick and mortar secondhand book shops as well.

Recycling paper bags and newspapers

I recently bought a beautiful Japanese ikebana basket from SRI, which is located in the NYC area. My bamboo basket arrived in a big but lightweight cardboard box. When I opened the box I discovered my basket lovingly secured in the midst of packing material created by loosely hand-rolling newspapers up into fat sausages. A piece of tape held the edge in place. The same technique was used on brown grocery bags that had the bottoms cut off and a cut made down one side to flatten them out prior to rolling. Small bags were stuffed with newspaper and even all the bottoms from the grocery bags were combined into their own plump roll. I had to take a couple of pictures and share this wonderful idea from Stephen at SRI to create a soft and environmentally friendly packaging material with the things that all of us have on hand. 

No flowers needed for this vase

Though we have an Anthropologie store in Madison, I don't shop there much. I'm not skinny enough, cool enough or young enough for most of their clothing. But a purchase now and then means I'm on the mailing list for their catalog — which is how I discovered this vase. As a gardener, I am a follower of the philosophy that one can never have too many vases. Most of the ones I own, however, are very restrained: wood-fired ceramics in natural clay colors, some clear glass styles and one or two slightly more colorful containers.

But none are as bright and bold as Anthropologie's "Curvey Chrysanthemum Vase." Though they call the color "mint,"  I think it's more of a soft teal. And given that we have a fair amount of teal and red in our interior, it should be at home in a number of locations. At nine inches tall and six inches wide, it also doesn't take up a lot of space. Best of all, it doesn't really need flowers! Though I can picture it with a big mum like its ceramic counterpart or perhaps red Gerbera daisies or twiggy red dogwood stems, it looks great just as it is. It's already brightening our winter landscape indoors.