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October bouquets – last flowers of the season

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I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.
– Leif Enger, American author, from Peace Like a River

Alas, November has arrived, and while most of the garden has slowly gone dormant, there are still flowers that insist on blooming. Here are the last bouquets of the season. Post script: I spilled juice from my dinner on my keyboard and it’s difficult to type because some keys aren’t working. So you’ll have to enjoy the photos without commentary. I apologize that many of the bouquets are similar. Such is the case when you have a limited selection of flowers. Enjoy! Until next season!

Scabiosas in the garden.

Ode to the sweet pea

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Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight; With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings.
 – John Keats, English Romantic poet

Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.
 – Boris Pasternak, Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator

I’ll leave the actual odes to the sweet pea, or lathyrus, to John Keats and Boris Pasternak, the real poets. I’m just going to gush about the new favorite flower for this season and share pictures of my bounty. Last year was the first season I’d planted seeds and they actually sprouted and gave me these beautiful bi-colored, deep blue-and-magenta flowers for many months. I carefully saved the dried seed pods and gave the seeds away and kept a handful.

I went crazy and bought half a dozen or seven different varieties at Annie’s Annuals. Last fall, I had David and Jacob cut down the two shrubs that were originally planted when we remodeled the backyard in the late spring of 2017, which David was not happy about doing. Apparently, our landscape architect was sad about it, too, because we had broken up the flow of the shrubbery from all around the perimeter of the backyard. But I felt that the shrubs were overtaking the small patio area and I wanted to look out in the kitchen/family room windows during spring and summer and see greenery and color!

So I planted the fledgling plants and here’s where my visual ode to the laythrus begins. Enjoy!

Once the shrubs were taken down, David and Jacob painted the ugly red fence that we’d painted more than 20 years ago. I resurrected the book-reading fairy with broken wing that we had gotten maybe as many as 25 years ago and that had been forgotten in the side yard. (Side note: We had buried our first family dog Bailey’s dog toys after she had passed away in the side yard and planted the winged fairy to watch over her toys.) We put up trellises (little did we know that this wouldn’t be enough for the bounteous sweet peas). I planted a few tulips and may plant more to give some color for very early spring. I also planted three different columbines, or aquilegia, in the front to provide some color at the bottom of the planter box. I also later planted a low-ground violet viola and the lacy orlaya grandiflora, or Minoan lace, annual, to provide some pretty white contrast to smaller bouquets. More on them later. This is March 23rd.
The sweet peas have started climbing the trellis and the columbine are starting to take flight. This is April 21st.
Early May: We had secured the trellis to the fence and put up smaller trellises in the front. We would soon need to tie strong string across various planks to keep the vines upright. As you can see, I planted them too close together (lesson learned for next season).
Mid-May: This is what I see from the kitchen table. This is exactly the scene I had envisioned last fall for this spring.
Early June. Despite all the support systems, ad hoc as they were, the vines were so heavy and laden with blooms that they pitched forward. What ended up happening is that we have a little bit of a natural overhang. I can’t get to the blooms close to the fence on the other side of this overhang – something we’ll have to figure out for next year.
Mid-June in full bloom: And here you can see the orlaya grandiflora below my favorite sweet pea variety, Frances Kate.
This is the view when you walk out of the downstairs utility room – way better than looking at two overgrown bushes!
Another favorite besides the Frances Kate is the North Shore sweet pea.
I strategically planted the orlaya grandiflora beneath the Frances Kate and North Shore sweet peas. Imagine them in a small bouquet together!
The early bloom of the orlaya grandiflora, or Minoan lace.
And when they go crazy blooming. Now you know why they’re called Minoan lace, originating from the island of Crete.
The ever-favorite butterfly-kite-like columbine is a perfect companion in the sweet pea planter box. And white is a nice compliment against the green, pink, white, and magenta colors all around this columbine.
So one thing I didn’t think of was the attraction to bees! Lots of them. A nice surprise is seeing birds coming in and out, and the hummingbirds hovering and resting on the dewy vines and seeking shade beneath the overhang.
This is one of the first bouquets in the spring – later April. The stems were wonderfully long, which meant I could use slender vases. This is a mix of Bix, Solstice Crimson, Nuance, and Bix.
More long-stemmed bouquets. As the season wore on, the stems have become shorter and shorter, which is something to note when procuring vases for sweet peas for the season – getting enough vases with the right height and circumference for the beginning and middle-end of the season!
A typical harvest every third day – seriously. I could spend an hour cutting and then putting them in short vases or cups.
An early mix of sweet peas when they were just starting to bloom.
This set, which I found at T.J. Maxx, is originally for utensils for an outdoor party, but they are much prettier as vases. From left to right: a mix of Blue Vein, Solstice Crimson, and Annie B. Gilroy in the first vase; a mix of North Shore and Cupani in the second vase; and a mix of Nuance and Bix in the third vase.
Another mix in a vase that had several “pockets” for bunches of flowers.
I have become a collector of tiny bottles and vases. Even a small vintage pitcher that I found in a vintage store is perfect for sweet peas – Bix on the left and Frances Kate on the right.
One harvest produced a row of sweet-smelling blooms. Oh, and that’s my artist friend Tana’s painting hanging in our library!
And now for individual attention to each variety. The Solstice Crimson didn’t last long and produced few blooms. It came up early and died early. I think that was due to planting too many of them so close together. Next year, I’ll find a singular spot for this beauty.
The Blue Vein was also one that struggled. Few blooms, tiny blooms. But oh so pretty up close. Again, I’ll have to find another spot so this one can shine next year.
Look at the Blue Vein up close and you’ll see why it’s aptly named! They look like butterflies on a stem! Lovely, lovely!
This gorgeous variety is called North Shore. Delicately marked and bi-colored, this sweet pea is going to have its own place in the garden so it doesn’t get lost among the similarly colored sweet peas.
Here is a small bouquet of North Shore sweet peas and the seed pods of love-in-a-mist.
I think this is a North Shore slowly deepening its colors.
Nuance (pink) mixed with Bix (cream tinged with pink)
Close-of mostly Nuance with some Bix at the top.
Like cotton candy up close! A mix of Nuance and Bix.
I tend to stuff the sweet pea bouquets because there are so many blooms. However, a few, some tender and not opened yet, give a Victorian feel, especially when put into a bottle that looks Victorian.
Cupani, a frangrant heirloom sweet pea.
Another version of the Cupani. I’m not quite sure whether these blooms are from the seeds of last year’s sweet pea. A couple of the varieties look similar!
I saved the best for last: Frances Kate. This variety has remained long-stemmed even at this stage of the season. I love how the stems twist and turn, so all you have to do is put them in a small vase and they create their own architectural shapes, almost like a Japanese arrangement.
Ruffly blooms, they’re like tiny full skirts.
A symmetrical shaped arrangement.
Another arrangement.
A wild, natural-looking arrangement.
Here is the vintage pitcher that is well suited for long-stemmed Frances Kate sweet pea.
I love the long, curved stems of the Frances Kate, the ruffly petals, and the intense purple markings and edging.
Another close-up.
And the last close-up.
When I write, I love having the bouquets around me, so I can enjoy their fragrance and their intense colors.
And our broken-winged, reading fairy is also happy to be among the sweet peas in his new spot in the backyard patio garden. I’ve learned some lessons for next year – don’t plant so closely, spray for powdery mildew earlier, set up the trellis and string/wire much earlier, and find other places in the garden so that I can accommodate the current varieties I planted and the others that I didn’t get at Annie’s Annuals but will next year. Hope you enjoyed the sweet pea mini-garden. Stay tuned for an expanded version next year!

Head in the clouds

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Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
― John Lubbock, English banker, Liberal politician, philanthropist, scientist and polymath, from The Use Of Life

When I was in elementary school, one of my teachers assigned us an art exercise to sit outside the classroom and draw the clouds. It was her way of teaching us about the different types of clouds by engaging us and tapping our creativity, instead of just going through the textbook. I remembered drawing them and falling in love with clouds. I even loved the names they were given – cirrocumulus, cirrus, and cirrostratus (the high clouds); altocumulus, altostratus, and nimbostratus (the mid-level clouds); and stratus, cumulus, cumulonimbus, and stratocumulus (the low clouds).

Flash forward several decades and I find that when I walk our dog, Sammy, and our previous family dogs, I have tended to look down at the sidewalk. Of course, I look at the homes in the neighborhood and the landscaping and flowers and trees. But I usually – most noticeably before shelter in place – spend that time thinking things through, either with work or my novel. On what I call our shelter-in-place walks (simply walks that David, Isabella, and I have taken around the greater neighborhood), I have paid more attention to details, to plants and flowers, trees and animals. But that’s for another blog post. I discovered the clouds again. One evening in particular, the clouds were so ethereal that I took photographs with my smartphone, fully know that they could never capture the wonder that I saw with the naked eye at that moment in time.

And yet, I was pleasantly surprised that many of the photos did their best to capture what I saw and produce in me an awe, a catch-the-breath moment. So I thought a few weeks ago, when I have time, when I make time, I want to share my cloud photos. And here they are. Enjoy.

This photo was taken on our early shelter-in-place (SIP) walks up the hilly Moeser Street and then a detour to get to El Cerrito’s Memorial Grove. It was about 5 o’clock on a mid-March middle of the week afternoon. San Francisco is on the left, with Alcatraz not far off. You can see the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin on the right. I didn’t think the clouds would be adequately captured, but there is a sense of the heavens in these clouds, an expansiveness, possibilities, even if they be filled with awe and dread.
Here’s an even farther view out of the Bay and city of El Cerrito below us. Here the clouds and sky really make one feel quite small and insignificant.
Final shot of that evening’s walk, with a focus on the clouds and open space in the sky above the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin headlands.
I couldn’t escape the rooftops and telephone wires, but I had to capture this full-bodied cumulus cloud. I think about the plane rides where you go through a bank of clouds and there’s this other-worldly sense to it. I imagine to myself sometimes what would it be like to be in the middle of that cloud. Like thick Tule fog, no doubt.
When the sun is behind the clouds, these amazing shadows and shapes edged with light capture your attention. It was a windy late afternoon when I looked up and admired the clouds.
The other thing I love to do is watch clouds change shape and sail on by on a windy day. These clouds had such texture to them.
Stepping back, I wanted to capture this march of clouds being prodded by the wind.
The rest of the photos are from a single evening in May where I was mesmerized by the clouds and I confess that I couldn’t curate the many photos I took, so please bear with me. Here is a mix of feathery cirrus clouds and cotton-ball cumulus clouds.
A trace of chiaroscuro on this photo.
More cirrus clouds intermingling with altocumulus clouds. This reminds me of a painting I imagine that my artist friend, Tana would paint.
I love the layering of altocumulus clouds against the cirrus clouds, how the dark altocumulus clouds contrast and come to the forefront.
This photo looks surreal. It reminds me of what a Raphael sky would look like. The sky is an amazing shade of cornflower blue. The cirrus clouds look like they’re raining down on the altocumulus clouds, with their white glow in the background giving this photo a three-dimensional feel to it.
When you go farther out with the camera view, it feels like a cloud fireworks – cloudworks – is erupting in the sky. I would love to see my artist friend Kathy render her interpretation of this photo.
The “tentacles” hanging down from these clouds remind me of jellyfish. And note the light edging the clouds in the top right-side of the photo.
The picture before this one was cropped. Here’s the full view. You can see the shadowy altocumulus clouds below the wispy cirrus clouds above it. I love the light and shadow play.
It was a half-moon evening. I love how the cirrus clouds around the moon looks like smoke from a cigarette and the subtle shades of blue in the sky and clouds.
Stepping back for the full effect, with the half-moon in view.
Cloud ripples and inky blots.
More loveliness. A close-up of the photo below. The white cloud on the left seems to sparkle.
The sky or the heavens?
The half-moon and the raining clouds. Goodnight Clouds, Goodnight, Moon.

The joy of Spring bouquets

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In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.
― Okakura Kakuzo, Japanese scholar, from The Book of Tea

It’s already June and I’m late with my spring bouquets blog. That said, time has been flying for some years now and this, to say the least, has been an unusual year. We are certainly living in interesting times – unprecedented times for our generation. Sheltered in place since March 16th, we are coming upon the end of our third month. One thing that the novel coronavirus has not canceled is the arrival of spring, the arrival of spring flowers in our yard.

Now that I no longer deliver weekly bouquets for the middle school auction, I have the freedom to make the bouquets whenever and each week to ask a local friend if she would like some flowers to enjoy. So without further ado, here are this spring’s bounty to share. One new addition to the garden has been different varieties of sweet peas, and while I’ll post them here, I will blog separately about my new favorite flower. So here we go!

I didn’t cut very many tulips this year. I was so busy with writing and work that I didn’t have time, but I also, for some reason, was reluctant to cut them because they were so beautiful and plentiful in the side yard this spring. So this is a rare bouquet that I made in late March. I dedicated this bouquet and the next to my cousin Annie Esperanza, who passed away untimely after a failed heart transplant. I gave the bouquet to Birthe, who always won the middle school auction year and after, because I knew she would appreciate them. I really enjoyed pairing the yellow butterfly-like columbines with the lipstick-red tulips.
Here is another view of the same bouquet. In addition to the two different types of tulip, I also added the flighty yellow columbines and the sturdy gerberas.
Here are my favorite calla lilies paired with deep magenta tulips and a new flower in our garden, pink ranunculus. I saw pictures of ballet-pink ranunculus, and I loved the tight layers of petals, almost like an old-fashioned tulle skirt.
Here’s a close-up up the pink ranunculus and the pollen-covered calla lily.
I spy two other tulips with their feather-like petals and a magenta ranunculus beside another pink ranunculus with even tighter petals (these look like streamers before you unspool them.
Birthe was the recipient of this trio of spring bouquets.
Calla lilies, white and blue scabiosas, red dianthus, and new flowers from a spring mix I got at Costco.
More on this beauty in a later blog, but here are four different varieties of the ever-fragrant sweet peas that I planted in the planter box in the patio.
I also thought gerberas were annuals, but one year I left them in the planter box in the backyard after the season, and to my surprise, they came up the following spring. They last through summer and are hardy and are coming up with taller stems. So red and pink gerberas, lavender and blue scabiosas, and red dianthus, with a little fern.
So our once-a-year gardener/landscaper usually thins out our alstroemeria very late winter. This year they didn’t, and I’m glad they didn’t. We had a ton of them, and a ton of Amazonian-size blooms. I could have made three or even four bouquets out of the flowers that I stuffed into this vase, but I guess I was seeing how many stems I could fit into the vase. The great thing about alstroemeria is that they are long lasting in a vase. A post-birthday and belated Mother’s Day arrangement for Kelly.
Here is another alstroemeria bouquet. With each one I started getting better about shaping them (not this one, though) and making sure the blooms were all over. For my friend Raissa.
Using a vase that one of the kids made in a summer camp years ago, I created this little beauty – my favorite Chomley Farran bi-colored dianthus and also red dianthus, white gerbera, small magenta dahlias, and blue and lavender scabiosas.
A close-up of the Chomley-Farran dianthus, pink dahlia, and blue scabiosas.
Lone calla lily, scabiosas, a few white columbines, and different varieties of dahlias.
This next batch of flowers were for my friend Susie. Here is a top view of six different varieties of sweet peas. Too bad you can scratch and sniff. The sweetness is intoxicating, wafting through the room when you walk by.
This vase had five different “pockets” to put flowers in, which suited the different varieties of sweet peas like a hand in a glove.
More alstroemeria!
I love this little bouquet: red and bi-colored Chomley-Farran dianthus, red and pink gerbera, tiny magenta dahlias, and miniature white roses.
This mostly dahlias bouquet with lone calla lily features miniature white roses and a few blue scabiosas. In honor of our friend Dan’s graduation and birthday!
My favorite sweet peas. The way this beauty grows out, most of its stems are curved, which makes it quite easy to make interesting miniature bouquets with it.
These next and last bouquets were delivered to my friend Karen. I’m finally sort of getting it right in terms of shaping the alstroemeria.
The usual sweet small bouquet that I’ve added love-in-a-mist flowers, which are now turning into beautiful seed pods and thus make a great addition to bouquets.
My favorite deep-blue hydrangea from our patio is the centerpiece for this small bouquet of white dianthus, miniature magenta dahlias, lavender and two blue scabiosas, and the seed pods of love-in-a-mist flowers.
A close-up portrait in monochrome.
Highlighting the delicate and beautiful annual orlaya grandiflora, “Minoan Lace.”
The all-dahlia bouquet.
Close-up of dahlia blooms.
And the sweet pea that reminds me of Japanese art.

Summer 2019 bouquets

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We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.
– André Gide, French author and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

On this winter solstice, yes, I’m posting about summer bouquets. They’re a buried memory, dampened by required winter rains. But I couldn’t let the year end without posting my bouquets of the summer season. It was my last year of donating weekly bouquets for Korematsu Middle School. Now I’ll be delivering bouquets to unsuspecting friends throughout spring, summer, and fall. For now, remembering this past season’s bounty. Enjoy!

Ah, my spikey dahlias!
The dramatic, dinner plate-size white dahlia.
The reliable, early spring through fall alstroemeria.
The pink and magenta version of alstroemeria.
A new-form favorite – flowers that are taking flight like the love-in-a-mist, yellow butterfly-like columbine (aquilegia), and red geums, anchored by my favorite striped Chomley Farran dianthus on the left.
Another version of this taking-flight bouquet.
I decided to use this celery-type greenery along with wild-growing purple flowers (upright). I’m forgetting their name.
Up-close view of the yellow aquilegia, Chomley Farran dianthus, and a white straw flower in the middle, supported by love-in-a-mist and light purple scabiosa.
A stuffed dahlia bouquet.
I love how the pale yellow dahlia petals curve out and spike, while the white dahlia is more fluted and layered.
Close-up of the fluted petals of this cream-and-orange (like a creamsicle) dahlia.
A stringy but beautiful flower sprung up, and I became an opportunistic gardener! I love the pink, blue, and purple colors of this bouquet.
Dahlias, Cupid’s Dart, scabiosa, love-in-a-mist, and Chomley Farran dianthus.
White and blue scabiosa frame this bouquet, but the star is the delicate, pointy-petaled pink-and-cream dahlia.
Ah, my short-lived Orlaya grandiflora “Monoan Lace.”
The grand dame white dinner-plate dahlia.
Dahlias, Cupid’s Dart, aquilegia, and alstroemeria.
These miniature lilies have been growing in the side yard for years. They play well with the alstroemeria and dahlias.
Yellow dahlia fireworks along with lilies, alstroemeria, and other dahlias.
This gladiola tops this bouquet.
My beautiful, fragrant sweet peas!
The most beautiful colors and deep perfume. I kept them on my desk all summer long.
The purple color turned to this beautiful cornflower blue.
Even when the sweet peas were expiring, their colors were still exquisite.
I made a lot of monochromatic bouquets this summer, much to David’s chagrin.
I used stems from some of our bushes to add variety to the bouquets.
The white scabiosa, with its pinpoint centers and ruffly petals.
Mixing up yellow and blue flowers in a bouquet.
The peach-colored gladiolas are naturalizing in our front yard. Lucky me, lucky bouquets.
The red geums have also been proliferating in the front yard this year.
The beguiling blue scabiosa. I’m mesmerized by this close-up. Such delicacy and detail.
The purple dahlias didn’t come up as much, so they were at a premium when they did, and much beloved in a bouquet. And I’m still in love with the cream-and-orange, fluted-petal dahlia.
A couple of years ago, a gardener thinned out her garen of bearded irises. We planted a lot, but our landscape architect’s work thinned ours out! So when the two or three plants bloom, we rejoice.
And we worship the multi-bloom purple iris.
The joy of cutting flowers, including the purple and white echinacea, which looks beautiful throughout his blooming from straight petals to lowered petals and bulbous centers.
The rare red dahlia, paired with the white dahlia.
Dahlias and alstroemeria.
Fuchsia dahlia.
Orange zinnia, fuchsia and yellow dahlia, and Cupid’s Dart.
Blue scabiosa nestled in-between an orange and yellow alstroemeria. Look at the stripes of the alstroemeria up close. Amazing!
My cherry brandy rudbeckia wasn’t as hardy as it has been in past years. But here’s a beauty.
A tight dahlia bouquet.
The reliable red-and-white dahlia, below a wispy white scabiosa and fuchsia dahlia.
I planted this new flower in a pot in our side yard. What a delicate beauty, a beautiful blue color with little antenna tipped in white, almost like straight sewing pins. But they look like they belong undersea.
A big sprawling bouquet with everything in it.
Ready for two deliveries!
Flower gathering before making bouquets.
Zinnias, rudbeckia, and Cupid’s Dart grace this end-of-summer bouquet.
The last close-up of this late-summer bouquet.

Looking back on the garden in August

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Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
– May Sarton, American poet, novelist, and memoirist

It’s already October, mid-October at that, and I’m behind in my reportage of my summer garden. Time to play catch-up. Here are the bouquets of late summer, with fall bouquets still in production.

For the August 11th delivery for the Korematsu bouquets, here’s the first one.

Here’s the second Korematsu bouquet, a more colorful and bright bouquet.

A close-up of my favorite, the scabiosa, which for the first time in my garden has been giving me more than a few blooms per season. And oh the beauty of the light yellow dahlia tipped in the faintest of pink hues.

The deep pink dahlia in all its perfection.

And the spiked magenta dahlia.

Dinner-plate size pink dahlia.

Spiked fireworks dahlia.

When I was in Maine, I found some beautiful little bottles, some vintage, at some shops in Brunswick. Since I have a lot of flowers that are short-stemmed but equally beautiful, I thought to highlight them in this display. I put them on a platter and used this display as decoration for David’s office group party in mid-August.

Here’s a close-up of the bottles, holding echinacea, rudbeckia “Prairie Sun,” centaurea cyanus blue, and a pink rudbeckia-type flower.

I made a bouquet for David’s office group party, as well. Cosmos, dianthus, and alstromeria accompanied this bouquet of dahlias.

The platter of tiny bouquets decorated the kitchen table alongside a plate of Isabella’s homemade vanilla iced scones.

A pair of swooping swallows, made in Haiti by artisans using reclaimed steel oil drums, appreciate the tiny bouquets I made that was placed on the tables in the patio for the party.

The August 15th bouquet is spilling over in its splendor, with white snow puff cosmos and monster red straw flowers.

For the August 15th ECHS bouquet, I added a platter of tiny bouquets.

The next day, August 16th, I had a lot of flowers to cut, so I made this bouquet for our LUNAFEST chair, Joann. The scabiosa, monster red straw flowers, and zinnias were in abundance.

Another view of the August 16th bouquet for Joann.

One more view of the August 16th bouquet. I confess I’m not great at curating these photos. This one shows off the pink zinnias.

This August 18th bouquet for the Korematsu auction winners is one of my all-time favorites. I like it because it’s so horizontal and bountiful.

Here’s a top-down close-up with zinnias, rudbeckia, echinacea, scabiosa, cosmos, and pink arctotis (African daisy).

The other side of this horizontal bouquet.

The second August 18th bouquet for the other Korematsu auction winner.

A close-up of this second bouquet, featuring rudbeckia, echinacea, arctotis, and zinnia.

I have fallen in love with the zinnia, so I’ll be growing more of these long-lasting flowers next year, even if they are annuals.

The other side of the second bouquet.

The August 20th bouquet for Joann.

A close-up of scabiosa columbaria, “flutter deep blue.”

The other side of Joann’s bouquet.

A variety of African daisy, another new flower that I’ve introduced to the garden.

Joann invited me to attend the El Cerrito City Hall’s time capsule celebration, one of the many events commemorating the city’s centennial. So I made a bouquet to take to City Hall.

A close-up of one of my favorite dahlias in the August 24th bouquet.

The bouquet at City Hall.