Category: Ixora

Australia · daughter · from my garden · garden flowers · Ixora · native Australian plants · rain · seasons · subtropical weather

In A Vase On Monday ~ Bird of Paradise

Joanne21 Comments

This week for my contribution to Cathy’s In a Vase on Monday meme at Rambling in the Garden, I have limited my arrangement to three flowers, based on the potted Bird of Paradise that has decided to flower! It only flowers during summer, but not every year. I am sure the plant would flourish if planted in the ground, but I have heard that once in the ground, Bird of Paradise grow huge and are difficult to remove. So in the pot it will stay.

In previous weeks I have said that I don’t like mixing purple and orange flowers, yet somehow I manage to do so often. If the colours are light shades, it doesn’t “clash” as much. Yet having said that, I have seen arrangements of orange and purple flowers looking beautiful together. This week, however, I decided to stick with just orange flowers with green foliage.

Strangely enough, if you look closely at the Bird of Paradise, the have a thin strip of purplish colour with the orange. Regardless, orange is such a bold colour, so today, orange can be the star attraction.

It is fortuitous that during the same week my Bird of Paradise flowered, my Ixora ‘Prince of Orange’ is also in full bloom. I found plenty of long stemmed Ixora to cut for the vase today.

I have discovered that orange flowers en masse do not photograph as well as the more subtle colours I usually choose for my Monday vase! Or it could be the dull light in the house that is the issue. Today is the first day in around a week that it isn’t raining, but there are so many clouds that the sun is struggling to peek through.

Ahhhhhh, that’s more like it – a delicate spray of light coloured Lilly Pilly flowers. 🙂

This week I have been out and about more than usual. My area is overtaken by tourists for the summer holidays. I live just south of Queensland’s Gold Coast and just north of Byron Bay, which has become world renowned in recent years. Byron to me will always be a sleepy little beach village, yet since several of the “rich and famous” moved in, suddenly, everyone wants to go there! So during the six week summer school break, I tend to stay close to home.

One day during the week, I went shopping with my daughter. The shops have begun their Easter displays, and although I had no intention of buying anything, this vase jumped out at me and said “take me home!”. And when my daughter said she had found a dish that looked very “Mum-ish” – her word – I had to agree. And considering my choice of orange flowers for today’s vase, the colours blend beautifully with the bunny designs.

I know for certain that I will not limit the use of this vase to Easter alone. 🙂

In this last photo, once again the orange of the flowers doesn’t look as clear as it could – I think I will blame the dull day – but I wanted to add this photo for the background. I often mention the purple flowering Tibouchina tree just outside my front door: in this photo, the tree can be seen through the window. Hanging from a branch is Tillandsia usneoides – Spanish Moss, or as we call it, Grandfather’s Whiskers. To the right is a mozzie zapper, although those blood-thirsty pests haven’t been as active this past week, thank goodness. And just beyond the tree is the garden which featured in my Hill Project post recently.

Thank you for your dedicated weekly hosting of In a Vase on Monday, Cathy. 🙂

Australia · garden flowers · gardening · herbs · Ixora · subtropical weather · summer · window

In a Vase on Monday ~ Heat Survivors

Joanne21 Comments

Late last year, when reading an ‘In a Vase on Monday’ post, I noticed that Cathy at Rambling in the Garden said she had collected her flowers on Sunday to take indoors. Given the heat of summer, and knowing how much water I need to add to the vase the day after bringing my flowers indoors, I decided to pick my vase choice this week on Sunday instead of on Monday morning. The first photo, taken this morning, shows a more upright collection of stems than yesterday when the flowers were first picked. It’s amazing how much more sprightly my flowers look after a few hours out of the heat.

While having a wander along the garden near the pool, which is hit by the main heat of the day during the afternoon, I noticed the salvias looking quite happy, even though there was a warm breeze blowing.

This is a purple salvia, Salvia verticillata ‘Purple Rain’, and is growing well. I need to plant more. The buds are not all open yet, so I hope now they are indoors, they open fully. There’s a bit of “trial-and-error” happening here!

In another garden nearby, which is slightly shaded, I saw several, perfectly formed Ixora ‘Prince of Orange’ flowers blooming. My other two shrubs of the same plant, growing in a more exposed area of the garden are long past blooming now, so these were a lovely surprise. I wouldn’t usually put vivid orange and purple flowers together in a vase, but these seem to work.

The Verbenas – Verbena rigida f. lilacina ‘Polaris’ – are coping well in the heat too. I love these flowers, both in the garden and in the vase – it’s getting them into the vase that is a challenge. The leaves and stems are so coarse! I adore their dainty flowers though, which belies the texture of the greenery.

When I had almost reached the house I stopped off to check out my struggling veggie patch. The silverbeet plants have been munched on by insects and frazzled by the heat, so out they came. I also need to go back out into the garden today to pick a few rhubarb stems before I lose any more, but the rosemary is flourishing. I snipped a couple of stems, just to add a touch more greenery to the vase.

Some of my parsley has gone to seed. I was about to cut the seeding umbrel stems when I thought perhaps they would look pretty in my vase. I have never considered adding herb cuttings to a vase of flowers before, but why not? They are interesting foliage, and they smell beautiful. 🙂

Once I had arranged the flowers on my kitchen bench into a new vase – a gift to myself just before Christmas – and I had taken basic photos of my chosen flowers, I began to notice the light outside changing. I clicked away a few more times, and about half an hour later I had taken far more photos than I intended!

Nearly every photo I took was a play on darkness and light.

And when I looked at the upper section of the vase, the leggy stems, flopping this way and that, reminded me of a wildflower meadow.

The green of the parsley umbrels, which I had considered removing from the vase, began to glow in the changed light.

In other shots, the background glowed while the vase contents remained darker.

The deep green Rosemary stems against a reflection of light added a new layer of interest to the photos.

When the room is in focus, evidence of the playful light dancing through the windows can be seen.

Many thanks, once again, to Cathy for hosting the weekly In a Vase on Monday meme. ❤