Friday fleurs

As you can tell, I love color, particularly in the garden! My favorites this week are each a bit unusual.

Can you tell what this flower is? It is usually pink, white or purple, has no scent and takes months to germinate from seed. It originated from the prairie gentian. 

This coloration is not seen often- more of a rogue. It has a color-washed look to it.

I included this rose because it looks like someone took their paint brush to it. No, I don't know its name! Perhaps I should be more attentive...

I believe this is the third year for us to grow dahlias. They require lots of water, can get by with partial sun, although they prefer as much as possible. They also require some sort of staking. If you get lax about this, they'll fall over. The good thing is that they are very adaptable and will change direction and continue to grow upwards again. We have a few dahlias that fell, the stems were actually horizontal, adapted and are now all growing upwards again, with the stems actually like an "L". We don't pamper many plants here! Our rule of thumb is that if it can live in a pot outside all winter and still survive, it is welcome in our garden!

Check out this dahlia. Most of the blooms are the deep, rich burgundy, but this has a few white petals thrown in for good measure.

Have a great Labor Day weekend! Hopefully, Hurricane Earl will miss most of the U.S.! 

I'll be joining the decorating team and working on two weddings. Yeah for the return of the cooler weather!

Thank you, Cindy, at My Romantic Home, for Show & Tell Friday.

Thank you, Artie at Color Outside the Lines for Vignette Friday.

Nature's Ways

You can say one thing about a heat wave followed by rain. The flowers love it! Most of our flowers and bushes are bursting open.

We grow many hydrangeas for cutting and seem to have them everywhere. Most were started using the hydrangea plants purchased around Mother's Day that were cut to the bone (using the blooming stems for floral arrangements); literally, we planted little stubs. With generous watering the first couple of years (hydrangea.... from the word for water in Latin... they love all the water you can give them), they grew just fine. The hydrangeas are now about six years old.

The hydrangea lane in the front of the house:

and along the side of the back:

And even some at the back of the house!

Hyrangea closeups:

This is such a soft lavender:

Enough about the hydrangeas! Here are other flower closeups.

Joe Pye Weed

Oriental lily

 

Honey rose

 Just Easy rose

These are European ginger babies. If you need a ground cover that is a rich shade of green and will go in both sun and shade, try this! Once you purchase (or, even better, share with a fellow gardener) a few plants, the following year you'll be able to split each plant into several. Soon, you'll be sharing with the neighbors, but the plant is not invasive at all. 

This is a baby lime. Really. Wait 'till you see the next photo.

So, that's what pops off the end of the lime (and lemon and orange, etc.)!

Last, but not least, our back yard is watched over by the robin as his babies are still in their nest high in the trees.

Thank you, Cindy, at My Romantic Home

and

Jessica, for Favorite Things Friday.

It's a Party!

 The lovely Catherine Hopkins over at The Shiny Pebble blog is having a party! Catherine's dining room has been re-designed by fabulous interior designers over the past few months in her Designer Challenge series. To celebrate, we were all invited! 

I thought I'd help design her party. Of course, I've had to make a few assumptions. Please join me!


Catherine's guests are arriving at the front entrance. They don't realize that the main party will be in the tent in the rear of the property. The twinkling lights they caught a glimpse of were assumed to be hanging on the back porch. You know, fourth of July-ish.

Not Catherine!

Let's begin in the entry:

The niche was crying for flowers for the occasion. I suggested using two glass vases filled with delphinium, agapanthus and magnolia.  Simple, beautiful.

Delphinium                         Agapanthus                            Bay magnolia
Italy of My Dreams               Veranda magazine                       


Look at Catherine's pantry!

Italy of My Dreams by Matthew White


Ah-ha! I found that lovely heirloom lace tablecloth for the dining room table. Thankfully it was rectangular. I didn't think it was necessary to use the undercloth, but we could have if Catherine had insisted. Maybe in another color?

Italy of My Dreams by Matthew White

Isn't the Julie Neill chandelier she chose to-die-for? 

It was just installed before the party, so we had to go with a centerpiece on the dining room table that was a bit lower. It was difficult to decide between two of these tall fruit compotes filled with flowers and trailing greens that spill onto the table,

 Abigail glassware


 or Casa Blanca lilies in these mouth blown vases.

Veranda magazine  Photo by Tria Giovan

The guests are now being guided by Catherine's oldest two children (who have promised "to be good for the rest of my life!" in order to stay up late and spy on the adults and sneak the food) out the rear door, into the garden and the tent beyond.  

Here is how it looked during the lighting focus last night. 

The dance floor, all white with a black border, is placed on an angle. The tables are all 36" rounds, to encourage guests to mingle and dance. No parkers allowed!

Catherine chose a theme of elegance (for a Southern lady!): cream and gold with touches of silver/blue, so we chose table linens of sheer white over an undercloth of metallic platinum.   

On the guest tables are these precious, gilded glass vases scattered down the center:

Carolyn Quartermaine    As seen in Set with Style by Caroline Clifton-Mogg


We definitely need lots of candlelight! Everywhere.

Set with Style by Caroline Clifton-Mogg

Be they candlesticks or votive candles, lighting is the most key ingredient of the party. And it goes without saying that the tent lighting makes or breaks the party.

The huge food stations on each side of the tent are draped with the metallic platinum cloths. They are accented by these large, fabulous vases.

 Abigail glassware

The flowers we used for Catherine's party included as many garden flowers that Catherine could cut. The garden roses were perfect. Look at her front walk filled with hydrangea!

 Italy of My Dreams by Matthew White

Here are some of the garden roses. They include the peach Crown Princess rose and the cream Classic Woman rose. The tent smells amazing!

       unknown name  credit              Crown Princess rose credit              Classic Woman rose            
We accented the roses with white and soft blue hydrangea, along with cuttings from the Weigelia bushes in Catherine's yard, and some Solomon's Seal cuttings. Both will last a long time if they are conditioned properly first.  

Veranda magazine                                                           

Solomon's Seal                     Weigelia

 In the powder room, we placed these garden roses:

Italy of My Dreams by Matthew White

And last, but not least, Catherine decided to give her guests these good-bye gifts as they leave:

 Carolyn Quartermaine Revealed

Can't wait to see you, Catherine!

I want to live here!

I just fell in love with Claire Basler’s studio/home when I opened the March 2010 issue of Elle Décor UK. An old iron works building on the outskirts of Paris houses this wonderfully talented artist. Claire’s love of flowers and her garden are certainly reflected in her work.

Being surrounded by so much natural light and having the subject you love to paint right at your fingertips sounds heavenly.

The colors mixed with the grays, the old and the new, the shiny and the textured… the combinations work.

Here it is! (All photos from Elle Décor UK, photos by Mads Mogensen)

A few of her paintings (courtesy of http://www.clairebasler.com/):

I love the silver and gold leaf backgrounds in these photos!