In a Vase on Monday: Scaling the Heights

Nearly everything about this Monday vase changed during its production – some of the contents, the prop, the actual vase itself, although not the title, which was triggered by the original inspiration, crab apple Malus ‘Evereste’.

Originally joining the crab apple was a late flowering stem of an antirrhinum in a similar blushed apricot shade, but once I moved on from the idea of a single vase to the three matched individual ones and needed to search for a third occupant, the antirrhinum no longer seemed to fit the bill. Rejecting it, I turned instead to Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’, still clinging onto its leaves which had to be trimmed off, and a wayward stem of witch hazel Hamamelis ‘Orange Peel’, already beginning to show colour – does it not realise we have visitors expected in mid-February when we open the garden for the National Garden Scheme, hoping to see snowdrops, hellebores and witch hazels?

My planned prop was a scale rule, a relic of pre-computer days when, alongside slide rules and log tables (remember them?) they were integral to maths lessons and lectures and, for some, certain professional careers. Judged too large a scale to act as a prop, this smaller set square was used instead and, along with the group of vases, possibly and in an unplanned sort of way even hints at a mountain range – but perhaps that is too tenuous a link…?

Props are not obligatory for vases on IAVOM but sometimes spark all sorts of intriguing memories and conversations, so feel free to find something from your garden to plonk in a vase or jamjar and share it with us naked of prop or even title, just leaving the usual links to and from this post so we in turn can find yours.