"One of the most delightful things about a garden is the anticipation it brings."

Monday, June 21, 2010

Making my own sunshine - Monthly garden bouquet.

I really wanted to be sure to join in with Noelle for the Monthly garden bouquet this month, especially since I forgot last month.  I had visions of a bouquet of roses for June, even knew which ones I'd like to put together.  But over the last few days the rain and gloom really started to put me in a mood.  The roses are mostly beat up and the slugs have been feasting on every daylily flower that tries to bloom.  As I walked around and saw the weeds I thought that maybe I just will skip gardening this Summer.  But the more I thought about it, the more I decided that I really wanted to put together a bouquet to cheer myself up. 
So around the garden I went, ignoring the brown roses and weeds and started to get inspired.   I decided that pinks and purples would be my theme this month and found plenty of flowers that fit that description.
I'm very happy with what I was able to come up with:

 I'm calling this my "Sunshine bouquet".

 I'm really just in love with the Canterbury Bells (Campanula medium).  I plan to save seeds and will be happy to share them.

 Campanula 'Summertime Blues'.  While I was out cutting these I found that my Campanula 'Pantaloons' was blooming, but I'll save those for another day.

 Also in the bouquet are Scabiosa (Pincushion flowers), Bachelor Buttons, Nigella (Love-in-a-mist), Clematis 'Jackmanii', Penstemon 'Sweet Joanne' and one Heuchera for good measure.

 And here it is on the dining room table, it really brightened the room up.

So thank you Noelle, you really helped me to find my own sunshine right out in my garden under the gray skies.  Until the sun returns I'll just take the Vitamin D that my husband hinted I should take, he even put the vitamins on the counter to remind me, and keep making my own sunshine by bringing a few flowers in and looking just a little harder for signs of Summer.  Now I hope you'll visit Noelle and her beautiful sunny bouquets and see who else joined in as well.
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48 comments:

  1. That is just a delightful arrangement and container Catherine. You brightened my day also!

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  2. Me too. Love it. I am always afraid to cut flowers out of my garden....beacause I am afraid they won't bloom again.

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  3. Your bouquet from your garden is very bright and full of pretty colors. Canterbury Bells are a favorite flower of mine, and I planted some last year.

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  4. Those colors are so nice together and the variety of bloom shapes. It's beautiful!

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  5. Your cheering-up bouquet is lovely.. Our weather, however, isn't. The weeds indeed have taken over, and the slugs, and our roses look equally awful. But I still love the PNW!
    Happy Summer Solstice!

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  6. beautiful June bouquets, Catherine! Pity, I never get to see those lovely flowers, much less grow them!

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  7. Your bouquet is better than any florist could have come up with. I loved it.

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  8. Thanks Catherine, I've been pretty bummed out too with our weather. Terrible storms, no power for two days and so many plants in my garden seem to be falling over. I will go out tomorrow and gather myself a bouquet

    Eileen

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  9. Well it brightened my day too. A lovely bouquet indeed with such rich colors.

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  10. Your bouqet is so nice, with the bell shaped flowers in it. I love anything bell-shaped!

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  11. I've been burned by a few types of Campanula and so have shied away from the genus, but I see I need to reconsider after seeing the beauties in your jar.

    Christine in Alaska

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  12. What a wonderful bouquet--with all of my favorite colors and some of my favorite flowers, so you can just mail it to me. :-)

    It looks great on the two tables.

    I cut gladiolus that I managed to grow successfully out in the deer resistant garden. They never even noticed! Some say they are deer resistant but others say theirs are mowed down.

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  13. I love the colors and flowers you chose to display in your vase, and Thank you for reminding me to take some Vitamin D!

    I so can relate to you about moods when the skies are gray" I'm just not the same person when the sun is not shinning, and find it hard at times to be positive.

    I like the way you turned things around and made a pretty little bouquet to cheer yourself up!

    Good for you, I'll have to follow that idea when I'm blue"

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  14. Your bouquet is beautiful. I love your Canterbury Bells. Used to grow some in our first garden, so I have a bit of a soft spot for them. Sometimes I think it would be fun to chime in on Noelle's bouquet challenge. Around here, at least for now, I'm at the mercy of whatever mother nature decides should be blooming!

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  15. They make my day. Right now in my garden it is pretty sad. These high, high temps are killing it.

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  16. What a beautiful bouquet you ended up with. Pink and purple - what's not to love. I know it made me feel better about the rain, slugs, poppies not coming up, and CHIPMUNKS eating all of my Campanulas. Yikes I'm about ready to join in the race around the deck and strangle their tiny little necks! And about the time I really want to croak them they start chasing each other and I'm falling off my chair laughing they are so funny. And to top it all off the rain has washed off all the deer repellent and they came through the other night and ate all of my Lily buds and a couple of blooms. Did I mention I'm pretty sure we're going to have baby chipmunks and Mama deer is already bringing her newborn around to show them how to eat my flowers?
    Catherine your bouquet is lovely - I'm glad it made you decide to keep gardening. Oh and you reminded me that the Dr. told me to go get Vitamin D too and I forgot.
    Happy 'rain' gardening!

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  17. So sorry you've had all the dreary weather Catherine. I always think I need to take Vitamin D during the winter months here ~ I know the feeling exactly. Shouldn't it start to be your sunny season soon?? or is this just another example of our weird weather year? Wishing you sunshine soon.

    Your bouquet is beautiful ~ glad it helped. Love the double pink Canterbury bells. I am going looking for some of those. Not sure I am patient enough to start from seed??
    If it's any consolation, your garden looks gorgeous from the Internet. :-)

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  18. Catherine~~ Your flowers are beautiful and your photos, crystal clear. Would you believe I saw sunshine this afternoon and evening? No? I can hardly believe it myself. :)

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  19. You've made a lovely bouquet there. We're also tired of grey skies and rain but toay it seems to be a sunny day (thought so yeasterday to until the rain started to fall) I hope the sun will shine on you to today / gittan

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  20. Dear Catherine, Who needs sunshine when we are able to admire this very, very pretty, utterly charming arrangement of summer flowers in such lovely and complementary colours? Perfect.

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  21. This is so pretty Catherine and the colours work so well together - if my mum saw this she would be wanting to paint it!

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  22. That is a truly lovely bouquet. I do like those campanulas, you've inspired me to try some in my garden come spring in my part of the world!

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  23. Wonderful, Catherine. That Clematis is the icing on the cake! It lights up the arrangement.
    Do you know if it's easy to germinate Clematis? After seeing Clematis in your blog, I wanna try it, and if it germinates well, I can ask my sister to get the seeds for me.

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  24. Beautiful bouquet, Catherine! Sometimes it's best to be spontaneous...you've made fantastic choices to cover for your roses.

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  25. What a gorgeous bouquet. I love the color palette. Many of the flowers you have remind me of growing up in England, so your post was a nostalgic trip down memory lane for me. Thanks!

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  26. Thanks for showing off your pretty bouquet! It is delightful and hey...here's a toast to Vitamin D pills! Cheers :)

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  27. I love the variety of different flowers you use. I wish I'd taken a photo of the little bouquet I had last evening. Great subject for a blog post.
    Marnie

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  28. Hello Catherine,

    Your bouquet is just beautiful and certainly brightened up my day :-)

    I love the Canterbury Bells...it is true that you do not see them much and they are so pretty. I like how you put the purple Clematis blossom front and center. Thank you so much for participating.

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  29. Ooooh, loves those blues and purples! Very nice bouquet! It all looks so exotic and wonderful to me, as I cannot grow a single one of those blooms in my garden. The clematis is a very striking focal point.

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  30. It's beautiful, Catherine. I hope your sunshine bouquet brings you some sunshine. -Jean

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  31. A lovely bouquet. This is one of the reasons I started gardening - for bouquets whenever I need sunshine! Wish I could share some of our sunshine with you - we've had a little too much recently! In the upper 90s with no rain for a week with more of the same in the forecast.

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  32. Love these colors together, and the combination of different flowers makes it rather magical.
    Brenda

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  33. I love the color combination of your bouquet! It does bring a ray of sunshine into your home! i hope you will have some sunny weather soon. I would love to send you some - Our sunshine today was white hot, so bright it almost hurt the eyes.

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  34. "maybe i won't garden this Summer," snort. i totally know that feeling.

    when i am overwhelmed with garden work and feeling blue that the weather or whatever isn't cooperating, i turn to "fun" projects that i've kept on the back burner in order to finish 'more important' projects like keeping to a planting schedule. i make garden tiles, windchimes, things for the plants to grow on, that sort of thing. sometimes it's better to just 'dork around' on something that isn't important, to get the mojo back. i can't help but work almost every day in the garden, but this year i'm really focused on making sure it stays mostly in the fun zone.

    loverly sunshine bouquet. i'm glad it made you feel better.

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  35. after reading the comments, i'd like to make a recommendation to all those suffering blues/too much rain/etc. get some "mini vases" and litter them around the house. i have five or six really tiny vases that are good for only one or two blooms. but it's so cheering to keep them filled, just by picking one or two blooms at a time, every evening walk. i spread them out around various rooms in the house so there's always something nice to perceive. not as much work as lots of vases with big formal arrangements, but still with the happy effect.

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  36. Wow stunning! Thanks for the post, it cheered me up. I have a thing for pink and purple flowers. I love, love, love your floral arrangement, great photo Catherine! Hope you have a wonderful day, enjoy the beauty of your garden.

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  37. The pinks, purples and blues are wonderful together. I started growing Campanula Summertime Blues last year, and love those silvery blue bells. They bloomed for along time, and were covered in flowers.

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  38. Your bouquet looks like sunshine to me :) Beautiful! Love the colors and shapes.
    What a lovely collection of plants you have.
    We had some of that same gloomy weather for at least a week. Seemed like forever. A few days of lovely sunshine lately but back to rain today.
    Your bloom day garden tour was wonderful!
    My Jackmanii began blooming a couple of days ago. it's a favorite of mine too. I love your Etoile Violette!

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  39. Happiness an always be found in the garden! And they look cute in the jug together.

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  40. Back again and what a real treat. I love your flower arrangement. Great colors and I love-Love-in-a-mist. I never think about using a nice Mason jar of some kind for arranging but you showed me how beautiful this looks. So Simply beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

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  41. What a gorgeous bouquet and beautiful colors that mesh so perfectly. That campanula is so striking, I love it!

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  42. The colors of your Sunshine Bouquet are exquisite. The darling campanulas, the pretty blue of the nigella, and the rich purple clematis all blend into a summer song.

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  43. aloha catherine,

    i love your bouquet of pinks, purples and blues...such an attractive arrangement...i'm usually drawn to more complementary combinations of flower colors like this.

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  44. As I write I can look at a similar bouquet on my table - different flowers by similar style. It's the best thing, isn't it....making your own bouquet!

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  45. I love this bouquet in a simple canning jar.Your posts are wonderful. Balisha

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