REMINISCENCE OF AUGUST CUT FLOWER POWER

Just sharing with you the table arrangements I made for our annual summer picnic/dinner at our Probus Club last August. All the flowers were from our garden. I carefully picked ones I hoped to use for our "western" theme picnic. I was hoping to have arrangements with a yellow rose dominance for this theme. (as in the Yellow Rose of Texas). As time was getting close to the event, I could see I was going to have trouble finding enough yellows in my garden for this. A few weeks earlier or even later, they would have been very abundant - but of course Murphy's Law!!! Anyhow, I carefully picked, and conditioned blooms for up to two weeks before and refridgerated them in a spare fridge. As I was not going to be able to make my arrangements from all yellow roses, then I sucumbed to anything white, roses or otherwise for fill-ins.

(please click on all pictures for better view)

I chose to make up the arrangements on the day before the event I placed all my material in the kitchen ready to start. I looked around the kitchen and I thought how lovely it looked and smelled - like a little florist shop. I felt very proud of the beautiful flowers I had grown. The "white" side was particularly pretty, I thought. The flowers included white geraniums, antirrhinums, phlox, roses, and hydrangea.

The yellow side which was all roses, included Golden Celebration, Amber Queen and St. Patrick and Tamora (not quite yellow, but they blended)

..........and as a single contrast in each arrangement, (an afterthought) there was to be one large Double Delight in the center. This worked really well as I knew that the table runner and the napkins were going to be of red and white gingham, so it worked fine!

For the containers, I used canning jars which with pieces of bandanna wrapped around them in red and yellow! These added to the fun of it. I inserted florist oasis into each container to make arranging easier and more stable.

As each arrangement was finished, I set them on the dining room table out of the way, while I was working on the next one - always keeping one with me as a pattern to follow.

It is difficult to tell from these pictures, but the arrangements were oval shaped.

I used hosta leaves as a base - unfortunately the photos do not do them justice, I do not believe. I also used pieris for greenery. It does not really show up on the pictures, but it worked well.

Thanks for looking at my summer bounty! Pauline