ONE LAST HURRAH

 

Hello all,

I'm writing this quite late at night because I got caught up watching the Matildas beating the Canadian team convincingly. This from a woman who has never watched sport except to see her grandson play basketball. So, please forgive any mistakes, they are due to fatigue.

The painful process of decluttering my storerooms is continuing, albeit at a snail's pace. Everytime I pick up an item to discard, I change my mind and put it back. I realised that this was a wasted exercise so I made a deal with myself to make one more arrangement with each piece before it is  discarded. Some of these materials, buried in the bowels of my storerooms, have not seen the light of day for decades, so it felt like I was using them for the first time.

In the arrangement, above, I used a piece of very old bark from some kind of eucalypt, which hung from the ceiling of my storeroom for decades. I placed it in a ceramic container with splits on each side and added Brushfield's Yellow camellias.

It was a long time ago but I remember my delight at finding the rusty piece of metal, below. I used a ceramic container and pink (unnamed) camellias.

The thin, rectangular piece of metal in the next arrangement hung around in my studio and was picked up only to be put down, again and again. Finally, I used it in a triangular container with narcissus flowers and leaves. The leaves have been wired to facilitate creating the angles. White on white doesn't photograph well but, if I had used a dark background, the black metal would not show. This is a compromise.

I used the dried palm pod, below, in a demonstration recently over a container with two bottle necks, hence the two holes in the hard, dry material. I was able to use those holes for the arum lilies. The leaves are alstroemeria psittacina.

The white, dry material was much larger but broke up when it was tossed onto the lawn. Again, I picked it up intending to put it in the garden waste bin but saw potential and brought it inside instead. I used one of my favourite containers and created masses of clivia nobilis flowers, leucadendrons and alstroemeria psittacina leaves.

This small piece of sprayed, corky elm was found behind the bin, having escaped the fate of its companions, who ended up in the bin. The dark ceramic tile was a suitable foil for the white branch and camellias.

The photographs, below, are two views of the same, floor arrangement. The palm spathe already had a convenient hole in it from its previous use, making it easy to place over the tall, ceramic vase. A mass of Brushfield's yellow camellias was all that was needed to complete the piece. It reminds me of a lady wearing a bonnet with flowers on it.. The arrangement is as tall as me.

Bye for now,

Emily