A garden should make you feel you’ve entered privileged space – a place not just set apart but reverberant – and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry.
– Michael Pollan, American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, from Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education
When one talks about his or her garden, it’s best left to pictures. So I’ll do that. I’m picking up from my last blog post and displaying photos of the bouquets beginning with July 14th. But first, some solo shots in the dahlia garden.
This petite tri-color dahlia has tight tubular petals.
Another petite dahlia with spikey petals.
One of my favorites – a deep maroon dahlia, which was one of my prolific bloomers.
One of the two Korematsu bouquets for July 14th.
Closeup with heliotrope alba trailing down the vase and rudbeckia “Prairie Sun” on the left and right.
The second Korematsu bouquet for July 14th.
Closeup with the rare white dahlia and a tiny orange zinnia in attendance.
Front car seat loaded up with flowers, with my daughter, Isabella, dutifully assisting me on all my deliveries. And Sammy, too.
A July 16th bouquet for my friend Kelly, with the birthday gift that keeps on giving.
This petite orange dahlia has been a productive flower all summer.
Because I can’t get enough of this rare white dinner plate-size dahlia. Perfection.
The July 18th ECHS bouquet with a pink and burgandy theme.
The other side of this same bouquet looks like a different bouquet – with carnations, daisies, helipterum roseum “Pierrot,” and cosmos bipinnatus “Snow Puff.”
A tiny arrangement that will keep my friend, Joann, happy because these echibeckia Summerina Yellow daisies will look great as a dried arrangement.
My bonus bouquet for Tuesday, July 18th, was given to my LUNAFEST chair and community leader extraordinaire, Joann.
A closeup with a big beautiful yellow dahlia, which is original to the first owner of our home, ol’ Joe Broglio. Also starring centaurea cyanus blue, alstroemeria, and Love in a Mist.
I only had one delivery for my July 21st Korematsu bouquets because one of the families went away on vacation. So I call this bouquet my stuffed dahlia arrangement.
Bear with me, as I couldn’t curate the pictures for this particular bouquet. Another angle with one of my favorite and also rare salmon, orange-colored dahlia in the middle.
A closeup of this beauty of a dahlia.
And another closeup, but of the pink variety, which looks beautiful next to the trailing heliotrope alba.
Magenta and burgundy.
And the pale yellow dahlia with pale pink streaks.
The day that I was leaving to take a red-eye to Portland, ME, for my business trip, I couldn’t resist making two last bouquets. To whom to give them? This went to my neighbor Carla.
Closeup of the brash and showy bi-color dahlias.
My neighbor Faith got the yellow and orange dahlia arrangement.
When I got back early Monday morning, July 31st, the garden was bursting with flowers.
I got back to work with gusto. Look at all these blooms!
I made four bouquets in all. First, the August 1st ECHS bouquet.
It’s really a rare dahlia, though I take a million pictures of it.
This compact bouquet of maybe only six dahlias was a statement piece nonetheless with the dinner-plate size of the blooms. The recipient of this red, purple, and yellow bouquet? My friend Joann.
Even though it was a Tuesday, August 1st, I had enough for the Korematsu auction winners. This pale but bursting beauty was one of the Korematsu bouquets.
Closeup of the spikey pale yellow dahlias with scabiosa atropurpurea “Florist Blue.”
This is the second Korematsu bouquet. Because of the lighting and its resulting moodiness, this picture reminds me of a Dutch still life, a Vermeer.
The same bouquet in bright light.
Back to the Friday delivery of the Korematsu bouquets. Here is the August 4th first bouquet, anchored by a ginger plant and flanked by Helichrysum bractetum “Monster Rose” on the sides.
The second August 4th Korematsu bouquet.
We celebrated my college roommate Susan’s birthday on August 5th. I wanted to do a big bouquet for the celebration.
There were many stunning dahlias in this bouquet. One of my favorite dinner plate-size burgundy.
Magenta beauty.
The white dinner plate.
Yellow spiked dahlia.
What a pair.
Dahlia love.
A different view of the bouquet.
This magenta dahlia is perfectly formed, underneath a purple dahlia.
Two bouquets for the August 8th ECHS delivery. Here’s the smaller of the two – and a non-dahlia bouquet at that.
The other side of the smaller bouquet.
The second bouquet – an explosion of dahlias.
The other side of the bouquet.
Accompanying the dahlias are scabiosa atropurpurea “Florist Blue” and the venedio arctotis daisies.
Rose-colored dahlia.
Helipterum roseum “Pierrot” (white flower with black centered rimmed in yellow) and catananche caerulea “Cupid’s dart” flowers hidden in between the dahlias.
Two bouquets ready for delivery!