28th June, 2021

 

Hello all,

As I was planning for arrangements for this blog, I was beginning to despair because of the lack of materials, in particular flowers. However, Once I went into the garden and looked more closely, I found more than enough materials, prompting me to chastise myself for being so spoilt by my usually overabundant garden.

In the above arrangement I used an interestingly bent stem of prunus mume (Japanese flowering apricot) and camellias. I chose the ceramic vase because it related well to the shape of the stem.

Last week, Vicky and Peter arrived with some long branches of silver birch in their car. A neighbour of theirs had prunned their copse of these elegant trees and had left the cuttings on the footpath. So, they were up for grabs. The wall arrangement, below, is the first one I made. I used Brushfieds Gold camellias with the cascading birch.

The magnolia soulangiana branch in the arrangement, below, was cut on 3rd May and I have used it in a number of arrangements since then. When I cut it the buds were small and very tight. As you can see, in the warmth of the indoors, it has now flowered and, coincidentally, so has the cymbidium orchid of almost the same colour. I also used some sprays of nandina domestica buds. I hasten to add that the buds on the tree, outside, are still very tight and will not be flowering until spring.

The original

This next arrangement had me somewhat embarrassed. I found the monstera deliciosa flower and two fruit and thought they were the beginnings of an arrangement. It took some effort to secure the very heavy flower and fruit and was quite pleased by the result. That is, until later that evening, when I was editing the photograph and noticed that the fruit looked ....ahem.....positively....phallic! 

Try as I might, I could not arrange the two fruit in any way that would not look ....embarrassing, so I replaced them with a leaf and breathed a sigh of relief.

The improvement

The original

We are very lucky, here in Melbourne, to be living in a warm temperate climate with four distinct seasons, absolutely perfect for ikebana. At the moment, my camellias are starting to flower, the bulbs I planted are a long way from flowering but the orange tree is laden with fruit, which are, not only delicious, but great for ikebana. Care must be taken in arranging them, however, as they are very heavy.

I leave you with this simple arrangement of my very prolific, pink camellia (name unknown) in an 'Arrangement with one kind of material'.

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Bye for now,

Emily