In a Vase on Monday: Collection of Compositae

Hopefully I have not upset any botanical purists  by incorrectly including anything that does not belong to the compositae family, and although this large family includes 104,365 different species these were the only ones I could muster today for this vase. Contrary to what I said last week, having looked at my previous vase posts, today’s vase is in fact the 51st of the meme, making next week’s a full year of them. I have decided to mark the occasion the following week by looking back over the whole year and offering a ‘giveaway’ – so look out for the post on November 10th.

The collection of compositae was planned over the last few days, leaving me eagerly checking to see which of the small choice of available plants would do me proud and be in flower today, as it might have ended up a collection solely of cosmos. There were a couple of emerging buds on Bishop of Llandaff (a prettier shade in bud than when open, perhaps), a sole flower on that rogue Dahlia ‘Noordwijks Glorie’ which I am convinced has been mislabelled, several freshly open Tithonia ‘Torch’ and what I think are the stars today, two Rudbeckia ‘Rustic Dwarf’ flowers, grown from seedlings given to me by a friend (I have already bought seed for next year). Spent flowers from the rudbeckia with their emerging black cones were included for added interest, with a few sprigs cut from  Trachelospermum asiaticum.

Having cut all the above first, I did wonder whether not to include any cosmos after all, but visualising a short chunky grouping in a jug or vase they helped pad it out, although in the end I didn’t include all of the cosmos pickings and will have a little vase of them in the bathroom. I had intended to try and use a container that had not been featured before, but with another short arrangement I quickly reverted to the cream car boot jug with the orange trim. Having fiddled about trying to intersperse the pink of the cosmos with its brighter neighbours and feeling that the more I handled the flowers the more they would suffer, in the end I just twisted a rubber band round them and cut the stems again so the flowers just sat above the rim of the jug. Being dry and fairly bright outside the light was good, and the vase was photographed beside the trough at the side of the house, against the background of mossy stones.

I am not entirely satisfied with the end result, being left with a feeling that ‘it will do’, but having looked back this week at every other vase I have made for the meme I know there were many others that started out like that but grew on me as I lived with them during the ensuing days – and it’s all part of the learning process! As materials become more limited, who knows what will be in next week’s vase – but I can assure you there will be something! If you would like to join in and experience the challenge of finding things from your own garden or round about to put in a container and bring into the house to enjoy during the week, then please do. If you would like to share the result with us then just leave a link in a comment  on this post to yours, and a link on yours back to this post. You would be very welcome!