Flowers In The House Of Heat And Humility: September 2013

I'm finding it very humbling to try and get an arrangement or two out of my garden.

Note to self: plant more for September blooms.

Usually I can cheat and bring home a few special flowers from the shop. But I haven't been to the shop for two weeks.So no cheating dammit.

At work I love when I get an order that requests a wildflower bouquet. I swan around the shop picking sunflowers from one bucket, corepsis from another, a handful of grasses here, some berries there. Maybe some lysimachia, asclepias, asters, it all comes together easily.

Don't try this at home. My garden epitomizes shabby chic at the moment. Sedum, Autumn Joy and Black Jack, South African foxgloves, rudbeckia seed pods, phlox, grasses, fennel, allium, persecaria, artemesia, some faded roses and a tangle of autumn blooming clematis are all slightly the worse for wear.

I had enough left to fill a little blue vase from Belgium with with unopened anemones, liriope flowers, a sprig of chokecherry tree, phlox, more of the tattered rose, herbs and seedpods, posed I see next to my equally tattered copy of " Mastering The Art Of French Cooking".

  Speaking of mastery, I now give you the moment you'll all been waiting for:

 an arrangement from S-Man.

He said if I picked some flowers he'd put them in a vase.

I gave him these.

He grabbed the clippers and went out to forage around.

Then in 5 minutes he gave me this.

In answer to your question,"is there anything he can't do", I have the answer.

No, clearly, there is nothing he cannot do.

I am now clad in sackcloth and ashes.

Gus was  the only one in the house not impressed by any of this, he slept through the whole thing.

But he'll be awake in the morning when we'll all be coming by to see what you managed to salvage from your gardens.

Please have Fancy Feast in gravy, it's their favorite.