Hello all,

Well, my garrya elliptica is flowering beautifully, although it has fewer flowers than last year. It does that. One year it produces an abundance of catkins and the next just a few. Still, I love using it. Above is an arrangement I made while the catkins are still quite tight. Below is one with the catkins quite long and fully open. The down side of this is the masses of yellow pollen that falls from the more mature catkins.

I used camellias with the garrya in a self made ceramic container

I made this next arrangement in a nageire vase that I bought for one of my students. I'm always on the lookout for basic containers for the newer students, trawling op shops and trading tables at meetings. Whilst waiting to give it to my student, I couldn't resist the temptation to make an arrangement. I used New Zealand flax flower stem and a single oriental lily. It fits the theme 'Paying Attention to the Container'. Sadly, the vase is no longer with us. It fell and broke during Mary's recent lesson.

Over the 28 years that I have been involved with ikebana, I have collected a huge amount of dried material, which I keep in storerooms under the house. (Sam is terrified that a single spark in there could burn the house down.) Every so often I look through them and bring out what takes my fancy to play with. This next arrangement was made that way. It is a 'Floor Arrangement", although I did have it sit on the dining table, where it would not be knocked over. I used aspidistra leaves and nandina domestica nana.

In my previous post I mentioned the Sogetsu Annual Exhibition currently on. The arrangement, below is my contribution. I used a metal container that stands one metre tall and used two different types of ribbons made of metal mesh, cascading down. The flower is a strelitzia nicolai, for which my husband risked life and limb to cut. Unfortunately, the white petals of the flower don't show against the white background. The foliage is loquat branches.

A closeup of the metal mesh

Lucy's strong and dynamic arrangement
using agave and copper wire

Jenny Loo created a structure using fine dowels with dark wire. She
used tulips in this Paul Davis vase

Christopher is very busy at the moment curating this exhibition but, I'm sure, he will be posting photographs of all the arrangements in the Sogetsu blog soon. Keep an eye out for it.

Bye for now,
Emily