Messing around with flowers

 

There are few things in the world I love more than messing around with flowers. I spend way too much money on flowers for Mr Sparrow every week, but it makes me so happy to see them in the window and arranged throughout the shop in vessels of all shapes and sizes. I love a big vase of peonies or huge branches of blossoms, but I equally love a tiny single bloom in a bottle or jug. I have so many different containers of different shapes and sizes in the shop and I have so much fun working out what will look good in each one.

We spent some time at Dwellingup over the weekend and I had lots of fun picking bits and pieces from the vast garden down there are arranging them in whatever vessels I could find at hand. Mum has an amazing rose garden but there are also endless numbers of trees with beautiful foliage, flowers or fruits...plus of course the acres and acres of bush with all its delights. Even now, in mid-summer when everything is at its driest and a lot of things struggle, I had a plethora of beautiful flowers and branches to choose from.

I picked camelia branches with cute apple-like seed pods attached, some branches from a fruit tree I couldn't identify but which I thought might have been a persimmon with very young fruit, some sweet little leaves from one of my favourite trees, the Japanese maple, some pretty buddleia blossoms, and of course some roses. I then arranged them all into apothecary bottles and jugs that belonged to my grandmother. Sometimes the nicest arrangements happen almost as an accident: I had to pick quite a few rosebuds with very short stems so I made them into a little posy with the buddleia and it ended up being my favourite! I also really liked the combination of the Japanese maple and the persimmon (or whatever it was!) in the apothecary bottle, which was actually just a combination of leftover bits from the other arrangements.

We also came across loads of Eucalyptus bark in the bush, which James gallantly transported back to the house, and I had lots of fun playing around with it. It was amazingly strong and flexible! I made the two bow table centrepieces you can see here, plus a ring (below), which was kinda fun, and also some tealight shades made by cutting rectangular strips and wrapping them around with string. They worked really well so I'm going to work on them a bit more and maybe even sell them in the shop - who knows?

What else did we get up to at Dwellingup? Well, the rain (and cold) put an end to my ideas of lolling by the pool, so instead we took a bushwalk, picked vegies, read, had endless fun with the bark (see below!), cooked delicious meals from homegrown ingredients (chicken with forty cloves of mum's homegrown garlic and passionfruit soufflé with fruit from our vine), took baths and watched tennis. Wonderful :)

Tomorrow...more New York!