Hello all,

Yesterday I was rummaging in my store room under the house, which is bursting at the seams with ikebana material that has been used before and might get used again. I have a huge amount of dried material hanging from hooks in the ceiling. A piece of bark that was loosely attached fell, narrowly missing me. I took it as an omen to make an arrangements with it.

I thought I should try using one of the  containers, which are stored away in our other storeroom and, it's a case of "out of sight, out of mind". The cylindrical container with its large holes and white interior meant that the arrangement should be as pleasing on the inside as the outside. I used two pieces of bark, one on the front and a smaller one on the back. The green material are papyrus flowers with lovely, long. straight stems. I'm grateful to my student Shaneen for the plant she gave me last year. She grows hers in a pond but, since I don't have a pond, I grew mine in a bucket. It has done surprisingly well, providing me with 6 flowers.

I've been enjoying the relatively less hectic pace since Christmas. I'm not running classes and schools are still out, so I'm not doing school runs. The house and garden still require the usual amount of work and, whilst we're enjoying this steady rain, it means I don't have to spend as much time watering. So, I'm playing with ikebana and sewing instead.

The summer calla lilies have done very well this year. I wanted to feature them on their own, making an arrangement on the theme 'Using one kind of Material'. It is not visible in the photograph but the stems are not resting against the side of the container but are freestanding.

The very first of my gloriosa lilies had to be cut and arranged. I used squiggly grass to add volume and movement to the arrangement.

The crocosmia have suffered a little this summer because we have had some plumbing done in the area where they grow and they have been trampled. Wth the plants lying flat on the ground the flowers that have emerged, have gown upwards, creating almost a right angle on the stem. I removed all the leaves to expose this angle and have massed them in this angular container that I made at the Sogetsu kiln. The bent agapanthus reflects the angles of the crocosmia and the container.

In the next three arrangements I have re-used materials. The two garlic flowers, below, have been used not once but twice before. The leafy stem is wisteria and the cheeky container I bought in Vietnam.

The curved agapanthus was used once before but still had enough life in it to warrant using it again.  In the last arrangement it's the squiggly, black wire that I have re-used with the tall garlic flowers and squiggly grass. By the way, I can recommend growing garlic for its flowers because, apart from being beautiful, they are long lasting. They, also, dry very well and can be sprayed any colour.

And here's an arrangement just because.

I'd like to leave you with a rather poignant anecdote. Less than a month ago our  friend, Elizabeth Evans passed away, having finally succumbed to the cancer she was fighting for the last three years. I met Lizzy in the early 70's when we were working together in a law office. We retained the friendship long after we stopped working together, meeting infrequently but when we did, we would pick up where we left off.

On one of our visits at the palliative care facility I took a floral arrangement, as I always do when visiting people in hospital. Because my arrangements are based on ikebana and they are, therefore, different to the commercially available arrangements, they draw a lot of attention. This was no exception. Lizzy seemed to like the arrangement with aspidistra leaves and disbud chrysanthemums. (I wish I had thought to photograph it). When I was speaking with her husband after the funeral, he told me that she had requested that one of the flowers be placed in the casket with her. I was so moved, words fail me.

Bye for now,
Emily