THANK YOU!
I'd like to start this post with a big thank you to all
of you who are following this blog. My computer tells me there are 4,200 page
views to date, which comes as a very pleasant surprise to me.
I mentioned before that there is a lot of work needed in my garden and I
allocated last Sunday and Monday exclusively to pruning and weeding. This had
two beneficial results - the garden looks a bit more tidy and I had a lot of
cuttings for ikebana. So I decided the theme for this post would be 'Ikabana
from prunings'.
The arrangement below is made with rose hips from my
'Altisimo' rose, which is a semi-climber and produces some very long stems.
They are very thorny and difficult to work with but I love the look of them
under water in a glass container. This is also an example of an arrangement
'Using only one kind of material'.
The container in this next arrangement is one I made many
years ago and is much loved. I used this very interesting Strelitzia leaf and
rose hips. The anthurium was not a pruning but was cut from my pot plant that
is growing in my bathroom.
My tropical Strelitzia (Nicolai) is getting a little out
of hand so I cut some very large fronds. I removed most of the fleshy part of the leaves, leaving
the stem and spine with a little bit of the leaf. Some bending and manipulation
later and I managed to get them to stay, pushing against the heavy glass
containers. The large calla lilies were all that was needed to complete the
arrangement .
This next arrangement is one I'm particularly fond of. The main
material was cut from the same Strelitzia leaf that I used in the previous
arrangement. It is the lower part of the stem, which is thicker and when split
lengthwise it reveals this interesting corrugated effect. The close-up shows
this more clearly. The glass container shows it to best advantage and my
accidentally broken stem of begonia adds the necessary colour contrast.
This is also an example of an arrangement 'To be Viewed
from All Sides'.
There were many dead leaves in my Strelitzia Reginae,
which had to be removed. Because they don't require water, these type of leaves
are very versatile and can be sprayed any colour. This time, however, I used
them in their natural colour in this unusual container and added a couple of
hydrangeas that were originally white but have changed colour as they aged.
I have about 10 Dietes plants alternating with oleanders
creating an informal hedge between the neighbours' and our properties. The
dietes were looking very scruffy, especially because there were a lot of
buffalo grass weeds in between them. So I cut them right down, thus allowing me
to get to the weeds. Well, most of them, anyway. Those things are tough to get
rid of.
This provided me with bucket-loads of lovely long thin
leaves perfect for an ikebana workshop. So I notified my students that for
class this week we would workshop dietes leaves. It was a lot of fun to have so much of this material to play and experiment with. Below are photos of my
examples.
