october roses.

I've had many moments with this rose bush in my neighborhood. I can't remember when I first noticed it. some years ago with aaron maybe.

a rose bush is a tricky thing. my mother had one in the garden when i was growing up. despite her valiant efforts it never thrived. gave a stoic red rose or two every summer. then it died. overtaken by bugs or mildew. i don't remember.

i'm not prone to giddiness. i know lots of people who get that way about flowers. sometimes i try to fake it, but hell - frolicing isn't my nature. flowers evoke different responses in everyone, don't you think? to try to describe to you how it is for me seems hard tonight. it's not that special... it's not overwhelming so much. and the funny thing is - when I'm walking home with an armload of these roses, cut with the kind permission of the woman who tends this monument - all i want to do is capture them in pictures and share them with you. i note the smell rather quickly, the headiest most intoxicating smell you can imagine. document them. consume them.
make it like a memory.

I'm going to take a break from flowers for a little while. a week, a month. we'll see what it takes. am i being dramatic? you bet.
my long hair is fully grown back; my leonid powers returned. i need to focus on things for the next episode.

see you on the other side, my dear dear readers.

from last Sunday

And thus completes our review of last weekend - a big old pretty weekend of bananas with back to back events. We've all recovered and are already onto more pretty things which I have to show you soon...like some phenomenal last cut roses...

Saturday at Alder Manor

It is just so beautiful at Alder manor, there are no words to describe it. Actually I can try;

You know the scene in the newer Great Expectations (which incedently, if you decide to watch it again it will be a major cringe fest. and then oh god, you remember how Clemente was your "favorite artist" because of this movie and it goes into a shame spiral bigger than the one you had in Urban Outfitters yesterday when you - ok lets just pop this into the first person - I almost bought a floral print crushed velvet dress. everything there is shit, which I knew, and was why I was avoiding it at all costs successfully for years but the bottom line is when you've been shopping deprived {see; bought a farm} and suddenly you find yourself in an UO {{surrounded by pre-teens picking food out of their braces and the [maybe?] stripper buying a feather covered two-piece hot pants jam}} with a credit card in you pocket.. all bets are off. some poor 3rd worlders will have a job thanks to me succumbing to the poly-cotton blended smells-like-teen spirit-pseudo-prom-dress I bought thinking i could use it for my halloween costume (think big ass floral head piece meets ripped black lace with a blood trail) {kidding!} {{not acutally}}). it was with regret that I bought said dress and then returned it only to find 3 other things I "needed." Had a big clemente catalog from the guggenheim show [1999?] sold it for a song during my non-consumer phase [2001] Must have seen the new (then) Great Expectations sometime around then)...where Kip wanders through Ms. Ditmore's (Anne Bancroft) overgrown mansion to find her upstairs in her boudoir sipping a martini?

If you remember those scenes then I don't have to explain my delight at arranging flowers at Alder Manor on Saturday any further...if every wedding could be this delightful to prepare.

from Friday at The Bowery Hotel

evening

10:49 pm
J Funk; point taken.

Caroline & Andy (rambling)

What day is it today? Riding home from the farm (another impossible trip of getting nothing done. Unless you count walking from one end of the farm to the other, cursing. In which case we accomplished a lot. Nea, inevitably rolling in shit. Note to self; find a scat identification book) I thought it was Sunday - dreading the traffic we'd hit, but no it's Tuesday. No traffic, home early. Time to download the camera and remember Saturday's wedding; Caroline and Andy at The Foundry...

Bouquet in the studio. Loved this bouquet so much.





Bouquet with Bride. I refreshed the bouquets between photos and ceremony. Slipping into the ladies room with them, I had myself a little photo sesh. Not showing you those.



Adorbs.





Tables...finally buying a few ranunculus here and there again after their out-season. Still not the killer stems I'll have in March, but pretty non the less. We have our dahlias this week, soon they will be eclipsed by Anemones..



Made Caroline a killer hair piece:



Caroline's mother kept asking about certain species names so she would remember when her friends asked later on. This family was one of my favorites...

Now onward...we're marching to a faster drum this week, will keep posting as time permits.
Side notes:

- I'm sort of into dunkin donuts now. Be assured, I surprise even myself.
- Beavers build dams to make ponds so they can float their wood around, and to make a moat around their lodges which protects it from predators. Also, they generally mate for life. Except when they occasionally mate with their yearling offspring.
- Segue...Woody Allen is my favorite, and this interview was tickling.
- When deer gorge themselves on too many apples, they get drunk and wander into roadways making this a dangerous time of year.


Also, Caroline, I'm sorry that I wrote about your wedding and "scat" in the same blog post. Owe you a coke for that.

monday

Starrett

Sample meeting last night for a one of my favorite brides of the season...those powder blue clematis are so freaking pretty I can't stand it.

Today we're making, making, making for a wedding at The Foundry tomorrow. Kate Holt from Flowerwild has been in town sharing our studio which is fun like crazy. Plus we get to steal all her secrets and learn all about her L.A. Looks! If you want to learn too you can check out one of Kate's upcoming workshops...an intensive flower weekend with serious floral styling and business tutelage.

tonight.

Our farm has a lot of apple trees on it. The couple who owned the property before us were true nature enthusiasts. Ken was an arborist. As we walk through the woods we find little flags he placed, marking new trees to keep an eye on. To take over a property like this is intimidating. I can identify lots of fancy flowers but am a novice at trees....and poison ivy, but that's another story for another day.

Nea is intimidated too. One night we heard what must have been a pack of coyotes celebrating a kill. Spooky stuff. Nea waits with ears on fire. Alert like I've never seen her. She doesn't know what to do. (I want my next dog to be a coyote.)

We sleep on a big inflatable air matress there. We cook outside on a grill, a generous and ingenious gift from my parents. The house inside is rough, a breeding ground for mold. Hundreds of varieties of mold. We used sheet plastic to make a shower curtain. I figured out the hot water heater the first week, a huge victory.

The lists we make of things we need is intimidating. Tractor, land grading, cover crops, greenhouses, another car. Physically, financially this list feels exhausting and overwhelming. But I said to Eric, we'll just take it one week at a time.

This week we have thousands of bulbs to plant and everything else can wait till next week.

Back at the studio things progress with beautiful, smooth, controlled efficiency. Flowers come in, they go out.
We're making the best weddings we've ever made, I say that with all confidence and knowing.
But I'm a bit tired. Tonight.
And I can be tired of flowers if I want to be.
We can't pretend to be enthusiastic every moment.

That wouldn't be very honest, would it?

(above are some outtakes from a shoot i did for a Once Wed post, see it here.)

I like. big. bouquets. and i cannot lie
all you other brothers can deny
when a bride walks in with an itty bitty waist and a big bouq in your face you get sprung.