Looks like August, tastes like August...

From Jean-Talon market last week-end... Hard to believe it's already fall.

Working on the Concordia Sustainable Foods Festival this week, then one more wedding, and THIS at the end of the month... Finnegan's first birthday squeezed into that, and maybe our income taxes...

Then maybe a little break?

The zinnia season is reaching it's end, this week will probably be the last batch... These miniature ones were sooo, I don't want to use the word cute because they were so much more than that, you get the point. The freckeled ones are always my favorite. Since next summer I'll have a bit of room in the yard to experiment, I'll be able to grow my own. These will be at the top of my list when I order seeds. I ordered a catalogue this week, with seeds for just about everything that grows it seems. I love catalogues. LOVE LOVE LOVE them.

The smaller things...

Sometimes it's overwhelming, sorting through hundreds of pictures of flowers... They start to all look the same. To me at least. And most of the time, there isn't an interesting story to go with them.

Still, some of them are worth sharing. So I lumped together a few pictures that are great examples of smaller arrangements...

You don't need to spend tons of your hard-earned money to get charming centerpieces.

When I worked at the flowershop, all the clients with more modest budgets got sent my way... My colleagues preferred concentrating on big spenders! And while it's obvious that bigger budgets mean more flowers to work with, it doesn't necessarily mean you have more liberty and opportunities as a designer.

When you are working with very few elements, the concept has to be strong and the execution has to be perfect. It's challenging and exciting. You have to be inventive with containers. Willing to experiment with different branches, foliage or fruits, all of which can stretch you budget more efficiently than actual flowers.

So small wedding have always been some of my favorite projects. I still remember a couple I worked with almost 10 years ago... Their budget was 15$ per table, which we finally upgraded to 16$ per table. In a shop where most centerpieces went for 75$ to 125$, this was considered pretty much impossible. The result was simple and elegant, and the couple was maybe to most satisfied and happy I've ever helped out.

These arrangements are all made with 3 flowers or less, coupled with inexpensive, locally harvested greens and branches.

First bouquet as a mum...

After Finn was born, my friend I used to work with at the flower shop sent me some flowers... She new I like to do things my way, so instead of making me a bouquet, she filled up a box with a bunch of the stuff I love. She called it the Ikea bouquet, because I'd have to assemble it myself... It took me a few days to find the energy to do anything with them, but when I finally did, it felt really good to take a moment for myself doing something I love. Before I started I went for a stroll in the alley to pick up a few "weeds"... The hairy looking vines are a species of Clematis, one I think is native to Eastern Canada. A couple other things too, polygonum and some stuff I can't identify...

It's interesting because it's not colours I would've picked out spontaneously, but the resulting mix was just fabulous. I naturally gravitate towards deep, saturated hues. These were far more subtle and varied. Just goes to show, I really have to expand from my usual choices of reds, pinks and purples...

I can imagine a wedding with a long harvest table filled with these. So perfect for a fall celebration. The place mats would be a dirty shade of purple, like the hydrangeas. Place cards would be light peach and olive, and maybe a few mustard coloured candles?

I'm already looking forward to the 2011 wedding season...

Pink & purple hues...

In this arrangement...

The peonies and the rose are cultivated, but everything else is from the neighbourhood alleys. Queen Anne's lace, black eyed Susans (without their petals), campanula, veronica, hosta leaves... The bachelor buttons are from my own yard! This is the first year I've actually had room back there to do some experimenting...

And some stuff I can't name. I usually have my trusted "wildflowers of the city" identification guide, but with the renos and everything I can't seem to find it. Oh well.

Patricia + Guillaume 2010

The "theme" we started with for this wedding was TOMATO ORANGE, to match the pair of shoes the bride would be wearing (colourful shoes are for sure one of my favorite wedding details... it gets even better when everything derives from them!).

Well, it turns out that there really isn't that many flowers of that exact hue. Less than I had anticipated... Or maybe I was just being too finniky with the colour?

I set the tone with "Orange France" roses ("Star 2000" roses are also this colour), and went with paler oranges from there, with celosia and freesia for the bouquet, adding eremurus for some height in the arrangements. I wanted some fruits or veggies in there to give it a "harvest" look, and since tomatoes would not have been too subtle, I opted for peaches and apricots instead. Finished everything off with a good measure of white, a touch of silvery grey (perfect with orange hues), and lots of greenery...

My pictures of the centerpieces (in white creamers) on location came out too dark, so hopefully the photographer will have gotten a few good shots!

Miniatures...

Some (most) of my favorite flowers bloom in spring. And most of my faves are special to me for sentimental reasons, reminding me of my childhood explorations and experimentations. Even at five or six, I had a mental registry of what grew where... A patch of violets, lilacs or lily of the valley was carefully catalogued somewhere in my brain for the following year. To this day, I can still remember what flowers/weeds/trees grew around each house we lived in.

Unfortunately, unless you work for Martha Stewart Magazine, you really never get to use these flowers in real life. They're expensive, finniky, and most won't tolerate an hour out of water. A bride once showed me a picture of her dream bouquet... It was a lily of the valley posy from Martha Stewart Weddings. I had to tell her that considering the price of lily of the valley in Montreal, her bouquet was worth about 1500.00$. She was pretty disappointed...

Anyways, this year I decided to have fun. Who cares that these literally wilted within 30 minutes, even in water? The pictures don't look worse for it. And for the time they did last, they were the prettiest things on earth... Needless to say, these all come from within two blocks of my house, from the alleys and neighbour's gardens.

In these... Cheap hard boiled egg cups from Loblaws, violets, rhododendron, lily of the valley, prunus branches, tulips, myositis.

Tout rouge...

I realized most of the pictures from the portfolio never made it onto the blog...

So I'll be showing them off in the next few months, along with pictures from upcoming weddings. I have so many interesting and creative clients this season, I feel very lucky and also very inspired... Looking forward to inventing new things and surprising myself and others...

Cream, lime and silver...

Fresh stuff as an "avant-goût" of spring...

This bride's bouquet is from last spring, but the spirea in my neighbourhood seems like it's just a couple of days from busting open like the little sprigs in this picture. I have a few branches being forced to comply to my timeline on my dining room table as we speak... But it's so warm outside they'll probably only be a few days earlier than the ones mother nature is forcing.

In this bouquet...

Cream double tulips, white renuncules, green cymbidium orchids, fuzzy succulents that I can't identify, tillandsia leaves (those twirly, silvery things), galax leaves, and local branches from spirea, pussy willow and viburnum.

Relaxing on Valentine's...

Are you really a real florist if you don't work on Valentine's Day?

Well, after years of sleepless nights and stressed-out days in February, I get to do nothing! Actually, I'll be studying all day at the library, which now that I think of it seems like the exact opposite of Valentine's in the shop... Still, a small part of me will miss the rush and the atmosphere, so I did a little tour to see what others were doing... Studio Choo, always a favorite, is proposing these...

Pink and orange in the snow...

Finally, pictures that don't date from six months ago. The snow and pot-bellied stove can attest to that...

Yellow at Fuchsia...

It feels like we have about four feet of snow here already, and while I admit to loving winters like this (mostly I love them from the couch, admiring through the window while drinking something hot), I am starting to miss greenery. No more strolling through the alleys snipping at wild things... It also means business mellows down for a couple of months, and the bulk of the work becomes consultations for weddings coming up next summer. So I decided to dig through my archives to post some refreshing pics from the past few months. As soon as I saw these, I felt reenergized and peppy. Lasted only a few seconds, but still!

From sometime in November, at Fuchsia. It's really hard for something not to look good there...

These small centerpieces were entirely made from gleaned materials, except the lemons of course. How I'd like to live in a place where I could pick my own lemons... Magnolia branches, blue juniper, tansy, marigold, and those silvery, velvety leaves who's name I can never remember... The containers are a sugar & creamer set from the 50s.

Sexy birthday flowers...

Pretty Sexy Thirty was the theme for my birthday this year... I asked everyone to dress up, so the house had to look amazing also! My old boss gave me a bunch of flowers for the occasion, and I sat at the dining room table mixing them up before the guests arrived... I can't think of anything I'd rather spend my birthday doing. The fuchsia renuncules with the green center were just outrageously perfect. The celosia's colour was so subtle, peachy beige from one angle, then glowing pink from another... Stuff like that makes me believe in some sort of higher power, whatever you want to call it. Also, my DVD box set about insects has that effect...

The crab apple is from a neighbour's tree, before the berries got all mushy, and the cosmos leaves and black eyed susan centers are from an alley nearby... Cabbage leaves from an old dying specimen in our yard, geranium leaves from the living room... Oh, and hiding in there are some beautiful lycopods brought back from our last day trip up north.

Just some little Halloween things...

I know, pumpkins and green apples are not the most original addition to arrangements, especially for Halloween week. Still, every single year I use them. I just like it too much to stop. I tried to redeem myself the following week by placing my flowers around the most intense purple eggplant...

Fuschia is the best place to make arrangements for... No matter what I create, they always look perfectly dainty next to a plate of rosehip jam cookies.

Toxic beauties... It's not squash.

POISONOUS BRUGMANSIA + CURIOUS DOGS = GEORGIA O'KEEFE

When my neighbor Maurice gave me this plant 3 weeks, ago, there was nothing but leaves on it... It had flowered for him all summer, but he didn't feel like over-wintering it, so home it came with me. When we came back from the West Coast a few days ago, this amazing spectacle was waiting for me... I guess it had one last go at it before packing it in! Unfortunately, this all happened after we decided to get rid of the poor thing, because its very existence was threatening the health of more important creatures, our animals. I thought I could pull it off, making sure the dogs and cats didn't get too close, but I found a couple of chewed up leaves this morning in the living room. Then Tim's stomach started to make surreal noises... Brugmansia can cause temporary paralysis, hallucinations, or death if you ingest too much of it (and our dogs ingest anything and everything...). Shamans in Central America call it Jimson Weed, and use it in their rituals... No such fun for our guys.

So there, the toxic beauties were transformed into translucent arrangements that afterwards reminded me of one of my favorite painters, Georgia O'Keefe.