Hello all,
A number of the flowers of my strelitzia reginae have developed these unusual shapes because, I believe, their double heads are heavy and droop downwards. Whatever the reason, I love their look of birds with attitude.
Our Sogetsu October workshop was moved on line and the topic, chosen by Aileen Duke, was to 'Make an arrangement using unconventional materials with a focus on transparency'. Please go to https://sogetsuikebanavic.weebly.com/ and click on Recent Workshops for examples of arrangements by Aileen as well as members' arrangements. Below is my arrangement. The unconventional, transparent materials are two panels of tempered glass that came from a freezer we recently got rid of. Over the top of the container I placed pieces of ceramic tiles. The floral material is clematis, which I wove in between and behind the panels of glass.
It had taken quite an effort and considerable time to create the structure, so that, when the clematis died, I wanted to use the structure again but with different materials. This time I used altissimo roses and crucifix orchids. However, as always, photographing glass is fraught with problems because there is no way to avoid reflections.
It's the middle of spring and the roses are going gang busters. I cut quite a number of a particularly fragrant rose, whose name I don't know, because I wanted that fragrance in the house. With the prickly, thorny roses in one hand, I went into the storeroom looking for inspiration amongst the containers and dried materials that I have in great abundance. I settled on these two matching, ceramic containers and the bleached driftwood and I cut a number of the ornithogalums to complete this rather large arrangement. This was my first attempt, which I placed on the island bench, thus enjoying the fragrance all through the house.
A few days later, as the roses were aging, I tried again. I cut fresh roses but used the same ornithogalums and re-worked the arrangement.
A few weeks ago we pruned our walnut tree quite heavily, as it was growing too tall making it difficult to reach to collect the nuts. I kept some of the branches in a bucket and, finally, this week I arranged them. My sister-in-law, Betty had given me two stems of these magnificent hippeastrums. They are so big and vibrant that they needed the large structure created with the walnut branches. I used, also, some large viburnum opulus flowers and alstroemeria psittacina leaves in a self made, ceramic container.
Another thing that needed pruning was this self seeded fern that's growing too close to my altissimo rose, thus creating humidity and, ultimately, fungal diseases. I cut it right back, which gave me plenty of fronds, with which to play.
With this next arrangement, I started off using the first of my spuria iris as the accent flower but, after photographing it, I felt it was a little insipid. So I tried the red rose in stead, which I like better.
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