Hello all,

The arrangement, above, was what I had originally designed for our last Sogetsu Victoria exhibition. However, at about that time, my cream coloured dogwood (cornus Norman Haddon) began flowering and I decided to use a branch of that instead of the strelitzias. Photo below.

Cymbie arrived to class with a large branch of green, kangaroo paws. She chose a heavy container from the shelf and a branch of smoke bush (cotinus Grace) from the garden. Cymbie painstakingly trimmed the kangaroo paw to reveal the stems and placed them in an informal mass.

We had some difficulty photographing the arrangement because, using the black background meant that the stems of the kangaroo paw are not visible. However, using the cream coloured background the colour of the smoke bush was diminished. So, I included both versions for clarity.

I had a pile of old materials ready to throw out but, alas, I just couldn't do it. I rescued a couple of pieces of bamboo, which I had cut in this, unusual, way. I then sprayed them black and placed them in a container with two bottle necks. I went into the garden looking for something long and thin. I found these, two, somewhat distorted calla lilies. The distortion made the flowers much thinner that normal, which suited my purposes beautifully.
 

You're going to be seeing quite a lot of my agapanthus, both curved stemmed and straight. The ones, below, are the variety 'Queen Mum'.  They are white in colour with a blue 'neck.' These I grow in a pot. The leaf is pinellia pedatisecta.

Close up of blue necked flowers

Below are the first of my gloriosa lilies. Due to ill health I planted them later than at other years and, despite their late arrival, I was very happy to see these gorgeous blooms. Because they have such short stems, I made a small, powder room arrangement using squiggly grass and a small, ceramic vase.

Here's another small arrangement using flowers and leaves of a plant in the arisaema genus but I don't know which particular one. 

Bye for now,

Emily