by Joanne Wiklund
Hats off to floral arrangers. A great feature on PBS Create TV recently featured a creative designer doing his best. With a new variety of purple mums, a deep purple and a lavender one he started with soil in an oblong planter. Instead of placing the flowers standing vertically, he pushed them in from one end of the planter, till the bottom of their stems were in the middle of the planter. Putting more and more stems in there on top of each other horizontally with the stems all the same length, they stacked up as he layered them on.
At the other end of the planter he inserted two large palm leaves to cover that end of the dirt to the middle. He cut more long stems to about half the length they had been and stuck them vertically in the middle of the whole arrangement. The middle was filled with lavender mums, the purple were stacked at one end up to the middle and the dark green big leaves were a good contrast at the other end.
I have a black thumb which kills any blooming plant. I can grow trees though. In pots. One of the planters with geraniums I tried on my front porch Hubby watered for me with water from the dehumidifier in the basement. I grew busy and tired of keeping them deadheaded, so I filled it with silk flowers without telling him. Hubby watered them for three days before he realized what I’d done. Coming in the door with an empty bucket, he looked at me and said,”I bet you think that’s really funny.” I agreed!
Isaiah 35:1-2 “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them ; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. 2. It shall blossom abundantly even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the excellency of our God.”