Autumn Bouquet

I started out yesterday to do a quick brush up of the house  in anticipation of a visit from our old friends from Oregon. Somehow, I wound up spending half the day on a stool removing four years' worth of dust from the tops of cupboards which we can neither see nor reach. I was replacing some plastic wine glasses on top of one of said cupboards in the kitchen (not an ideal spot, but I have been unable to come up with a more convenient one)  and,  horrified by what I saw, proceeded to discover that removing grease imbued dust was more than I bargained for…but the fact that the kitchen is also the living room spurred me on. I wish I could say that the place is now free of dust, grease, spiders and dog hair, but that will never happen….

I have been enjoying filling 'Urnie' , a big yellow vase, with things from the garden. The main event in today's offering is drying hydrangea flowers. The thumbnail shows the one from which  I took yesterday's picture. I love big, showy flowers that are actually clusters of small blossoms. Most of the things in this arrangement…leucodendrons, hydrangeas and grasses will last all Fall. The asparagus ferns will turn yellow and the plum branches will lose their leaves, but can be easily replaced. I was inspired by the huge arrangements at the 'Calabash' benefit we attended recently. 

I'm sure that when we have guests this bouquet will be consigned to the porch when we get tired of trying to see each other through it,  but there seems to be no other place to put it to show it to best advantage than the coffee table in the living room….