When I first bought my house I started buying fresh cut flowers. Lots of them. You might call it an obscene amount. If my flower obsession were a pornographic magazine it would be Hustler, not Playboy. O-B-S-C-E-N-E. I’ve cut waayyyyy back but I still have new fresh flowers every week. Through trial and error (and no fear of cutting the stems) I’ve taught myself to arrange just about anything. So the next time someone gives you one of those grocery store bouquets DO SOMETHING with it. Don’t just stick them in a tall vase. Try different vases, don’t be afraid to cut the stems in half if you have to, and throw out any of the flowers you think are just plain ugly. You’ll screw up A LOT of flowers at first. But you’ll learn pretty quickly what works and what doesn’t. Or if you want to, just copy some of my weekly flower arrangements, and when you feel confident you can venture out on your own; or into your neighbours backyard. At night. With some clippers and some kind of cover story.
I put it off as long as I could, but last week I finally broke down and bought some “fall” plants. You know. Mums, ornamental cabbages, pumpkin pie bushes. That sort of thing. The mums I got at my local grocery store. They were just sitting right outside the front door. Free obviously. Which I [...]
For the 4th summer in a row I haven’t had a single flower in my backyard until August. And I don’t imagine things will change next year. What happens is, every spring I end up undertaking some ridiculously huge project in the backyard. Something along the lines of rebuilding my backyard or putting up a [...]
Driving home from the cottage last week my fella pointed out a group of flowers by the side of the road and asked what they were called. My boyfriend has a tendency to call all flowers Lupins, so this question was kind of a breakthrough for him. (I can’t really complain about [...]
Garlic Scapes A whole bunch of years ago (how’s that for elegant writing?) I planted a whack of garlic in my neighbour’s front yard when she wasn’t looking. And then I didn’t tell her about it. Ever. Too afraid to do something like that? You shouldn’t be. What’s life without a little fun and trespassing? [...]
There are two things in life that instantly make me happy. The first is filling my car up with gas. Not because I love filling my car up with gas. I hate filling my car up with gas. As far as life’s little pleasure’s go, it’s right up there with the family pet’s wretched breath [...]
The Hyacinth: (def) An upright flowery blob with bell shaped petal type thingees. Ability to stink up a whole room in a single mound. Lovely. Spring smells like 2 things to me. Hyacinths and water logged worms. So far this year I’ve only smelled the Hyacinths because there isn’t a worm to be found. [...]
ANY CHARA CTER HERE I have this one rose bush. It’s a particularly troublesome rose bush. To be blunt, this rose bush is an asshead. It’s all wonky and spindly and I don’t know how, but it grows thorns made out of Tarantula fangs. It’s always the very first rose bush to get black spot, [...]
Nothing says autumn like the sight of the ubiquitous potted mum. Except maybe the sound of raking leaves. And the accompanying sound of someone screaming at the top of their lungs as they realize the leaves they’ve been shoving into bags with their bare hands are filled with spiders. Possibly deadly, jumping, flesh eating spiders. [...]
As every good home florist knows, you’re supposed to change the water in your floral arrangement vase every few days. Provided there are actual flowers in the vase that is. This apparently keeps the flowers fresher. I’m not convinced. Plus I can’t be bothered. So I don’t do this. However, there are a few flowers [...]
