In a Vase on Monday: Ain’t No Mountain

Posting a vase on Monday with pickings from our own gardens or foraged nearby, although still a challenge, is not the unscalable mountain it used to be. We are overcoming our reluctance to pick blooms, finding material we might once-upon-a-time have overlooked, learning that plonking informally is as effective as grand arrangements and generally realising just how much pleasure the whole process brings. If you haven’t joined in already please consider doing so and find out for yourselves – just leave a link to and from this post so we can share in your pleasure too.

Today I will make no apology for starting with Dahlia ‘Serena’ again – I am just in complete awe of the number of blooms and the length of their stems that I just had to include them – not that you would realise there were seven of these lovely greenish white blooms in the vase when you look at the photo above! Joining them are heads of Echinops ‘Mount Everest’ ** which triggered the props and the final title of the vase, the white globes making a pleasant change from the usual blue varieties. Maintaining the green and white palette, seedheads from one of the numerous self-seeded poppies which have been so glorious this year were added, along with immature flowers of Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’, disappointingly ordinary white heads of Daucus carota ‘Purple Kisses’, supposedly a mix of crimson and white, and sprays of Clematis jouiniana ‘Praecox’.

The jug is one that has been hanging in the kitchen gathering dust for a few years so it was no doubt happy to have wash and be pressed into service, whilst the props just fell into place as if they were meant for each other – sheet music of ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ (the newest song we are learning in our barbershop group), a pack of Toblerone in an unusual format and a tiny mountainous piece of apophyllite that I have shown before.

Will your vase and props just fall into place today? Enjoy the challenge even if they don’t!

** alas, a day after posting I remembered that the featured echinops was in fact called ‘Arctic Glow’ and not ‘Mount Everest’ (which is an allium) – thus rendering my mountainous props no longer relevant… Apologies to anyone trying to seek out a non-existent echinops!