Flowers on Friday ... Wedding Flowers

Since we live on a rose farm, it was a foregone conclusion that roses from my gardens would play a big part in the flower designs for our daughter's wedding.  Most of the roses were going to be in full bloom, and we should have had our pick of any sort of wonderful choices for the reception table arrangements.  (The bouquets for our daughter and her bridesmaids were done by a florist friend of mine.)  Mother Nature had other ideas ... sending unseasonably high temperatures during the week before the wedding which fried almost everything in the yard.  We had to quickly switch to Plan B ... florist flowers.

Two days before the wedding, our daughter and I went to Sieck Wholesale in Richmond to choose flowers.  Their selection is superb, and it was a difficult for us to stay on track ... we needed Stargazer lilies and an assortment of roses ... nothing else.

Our daughter had so much fun sorting through the various boxes of roses, choosing her favorites.  We left with ten bunches of roses (with 20-24 in each bunch) and three bunches of lilies.  The lovely folks at Sieck's packaged the flowers for us in a large box with a bag of ice to keep them cool during the one-hour ride home.

As soon as we got home, we began unpacking the flowers.  We had to get them into water and outside in the warm shade for them to start to open so we could work with them the next day to make the arrangements.

Here we have the fruits of a morning's labor ... dozens and dozens of beautiful roses in buckets of warm water.  (The buckets are plastic wastebaskets from the Dollar Store.  We stopped there on the way home when I realized that I didn't have any clean buckets for the flowers.)

At the top right corner of this photo, you can see the throwing bouquet made from silk flowers on top of the corner cupboard.  We put it up there to keep it away from the cats.

I love the colors we chose.  They coordinated beautifully with the lilies.

The next day, before the rehearsal, my mother and our middle daughter took charge of making the arrangements.  We carried the flowers and the containers out to the reception tent, and the two of them went to town.  Each arrangement started with two stems of lilies, and was filled in with a random assortment of roses.

The two of them worked assembly-line style, adding roses to each arrangement in turn until each blue jar couldn't hold another flower.

I love the finished product!  They did such a beautiful job.

Here's a shot of all 18 arrangements, ready to go for when we set the tables on Saturday morning.

Just for fun, here's a photo I took of the Rehearsal Dinner.  Most of the wedding party was leaving shortly after the rehearsal to go see Travis Tritt in concert, so we brought in pizza and beer for dinner.  No plates, no glasses ... we ate pizza straight from the box and drank beer out of cans, and it was perfect!

Saturday morning, with tablecloths in place, and the places set with plates and glasses, the flowers in their blue jars were the star of the show ... at least until the bride arrived, that is.

On Sunday, I took flowers next door to decorate the tasting room at Hartwood Winery, gave some to friends, and spread the rest throughout the house.  The place smelled heavenly!

Hopefully you're not going to get bored with wedding stuff, because I have more.  I'm just now getting the time to sit and gather and format the photos.

Propagate When the Petals Fall

'Tis the season ... propagation season, that is.  As soon as the roses in the garden finish their first flush of bloom, the time is perfect to take cuttings and get started producing next year's crop of roses for the nursery.

The process of rooting roses is anything but a SURE thing.  Even if everything comes together perfectly, it's still up to Mother Nature to provide the conditions necessary for a piece of a rose stem to produce roots and become a new plant.  I am always looking for ways to improve my odds.

There is a rosarian and rose breeder that I respect who is promoting a new way of propagating that seems to show great promise.  (You can read about it and see his photos on his blog HERE.)  The whole idea is to jump-start callousing and rooting by wrapping the prepared cuttings in damp newspaper and letting them sit in cool indoor conditions for two weeks.  I'm intrigued, and I'm giving it a try.

I am taking my cuttings as I usually do, except with this method I removed all of the leaves from the cuttings.  The leaves could be a source of rot while the cuttings are wrapped up ... and rotting is the NOT the objective here.

Here are 20 bundles of cuttings, standing in a couple of inches of water in my trusty dollar-store bucket.

The first thing I like about this method is that, because there is no potting soil involved at this point, I can work with the cuttings in the kitchen.  I am usually sitting outside with little pots of soil, preparing cuttings at a table in the shade.

Each variety of rose is bundled with a tag and held with a rubberband.

I use an exacto knife to shave small slices off each side of the bottom part of the cutting.  This reminds me of carefully peeling asparagus.  I immediately dip the cutting into rooting hormone ... my choice of rooting hormone right now is Hormodin #2.

Notice how the tag is still with the cuttings.

When I have sliced and dipped every cutting in a bundle, I wrap the cuttings and their tag in damp newspaper.  (If I lose the tag, the cuttings are worthless.)  The resulting packet looks a lot like a burrito. 

Here is a pile of packets stacked in the sink.

The packets go into a gallon zipper bag, marked with today's date, and the bag is now sitting on the mantel in the game room in our basement.  My instructions say to keep the packets in a place where the temperature stays in the 60s ... and our basement is the place. 

This is one of four bags of packets that I have produced over the past two days, with 70 varieties so far.

I'm now supposed to leave the packets alone for two weeks.  During that time, the cuttings are supposed to callous (a precursor to rooting) and some of them may even begin to make tiny roots.  I don't know if I have the courage to risk ALL of my cuttings on a new process like this.  As of now, I will let the cuttings rest in their packets for a couple of days ... then I think I will pot up half of them and put them on the mist table in the greenhouse.

I will post updates and photos at each stage of this experiment.  I can't wait to see what happens.

On The Mend

Shortly after we returned from dropping our middle daughter at the airport on Monday evening, my throat began to feel scratchy.  By Tuesday morning, I could barely swallow.  Our youngest daughter had been to the doctor for a sore throat on Thursday before the wedding, only to discover that it was viral and had to run its course.  I assume, generous child that she is, that she shared her germs with me.

I woke up at 2am on Wednesday, sneezing, blowing my nose, coughing, and feeling really, really crappy.  I got out of bed, so I didn't disturb The Husband, and I took to the couch in the family room.  There I remained until dinnertime last night.  Yes, folks, I was one with the couch for almost two full days.

Alice, on my ever-present green down throw, keeping an eye on me.

Most of you have already figured out that I am a ball of energy and perpetual motion, with multiple projects going on at the same time, so finding me in the same spot for almost 48 straight hours is completely unheard of.  Even if I don't feel well, I usually push through it.  This time, already worn down by wedding plans and other causes of general exhaustion and stress, the virus took hold and I was DOWN.

On the bright side, if I had to get sick and be forced to stay inside, having it happen during a heat wave was pretty good timing.  The couch is really comfortable.  I have my laptop nearby, and the TV remote.  (daytime TV really sucks, have you noticed?)  All of the cats and dogs have been taking turns keeping me company.  The cats seem especially glad to have me around.

Maggie and Dorothy, napping with me.

This morning, I feel much better ... well enough to take my coffee cup with me and check on the garden and the greenhouse a little while ago.  I still can't get too far from a tissue box, but at least I'm not blowing my nose quite as frequently as I have been.  (I would like to thank the folks at P&G for inventing Puffs Plus tissues.  I am almost halfway through my THIRD box of them.  If I were using regular tissues, I imagine my nose would be in pretty sorry shape by now.) 

I'm still going to take it easy for the rest of today.  I have a few things that I would like to get done outside, nothing strenuous and I can work in the shade in short spurts if necessary ... and I'm going to be careful not to overdo it.

Progress on the Design of Our Front Porch

Do you remember this inspiration photo?

I first introduced you to this lovely West Virginia early Victorian porch in THIS post from March.  I love the feeling of the ornamentation on this porch, and I am using it as inspiration for the design of the brackets and balusters for our front porch ... which currently looks like this:

The framing, the ceiling, and the floor are new ... and the 4 x 4 cedar posts will be wrapped with wood and painted.

The West Virginia house is in the hometown of a dear friend of ours, and our friend knows the lady who owns the house.  On his last trip there, he and his wife visited her, bringing with them Sharpie markers and foam core board, and they traced the balusters for me.  They would have traced the brackets, too ... but the brackets are larger than the foam core, so these will have to wait until a return trip later this month.

I traced the outline of the baluster onto paper, sharpening the contours which were obscured by 150+ years of paint and wear, and this is what I got:

It's good, but not quite good enough.  Our porch is 10 feet off the ground, so building code requires that our railing be 36 inches high.  This baluster is 24 inches tall.  We could build up the railing with wider bottom boards and taller framing underneath the handrail, but I was afraid that this would look chunky and contrived.

As I let the dogs out this morning, I spotted this on our deck leaning against the barbeque:

It is an antique balluster that The Husband and I bought at Luckett's Fair a few years ago.  When we bought it, I figured that I could use it as a pattern for something, or strip it and put hooks on it for hats.  As I looked at it this morning, my thoughts started to whirl ... this baluster is 30 inches high ... the shape is very similar to the one from West Virginia ... Hmmmmm.

I brought the baluster into the house, traced it, added some of the cut-out details from the West Virginia design, and I came up with this:

I absolutely love this design!  It's taller, which will make it easier for us to construct a railing that meets code requirements.  The curved cut-outs echo the lacy design of the West Virginia porch, and the longer length makes it seem a lot more graceful.  Here is a comparison to show what the two balusters look like side by side, taped to a yard stick and clamped 36 inches from the porch floor.

You have to use your imagination and picture a whole row of ballusters sitting on framing with a handrail on top. 

Folks, I think we have a winner!

Wedding Pictures

Our daughter's wedding on Saturday was absolutely beautiful!  The weather was perfect.  The bride was radiant as she and her groom said their vows.  We could not have had a more perfect day!

As promised, here are a few photos ...

Stay tuned as I sort through my photos of our preparations, and gather photos from others who took them on the Wedding Day.

Today will be tough.  Our middle daughter is going back home to Montana this afternoon.  I can't express how much I have loved having her here for the past few days, and how much I will miss her when she goes.

I am tired ... very, very tired.

Wedding Day!

Today is a beautiful, sunny day ... warm, but not too warm, with no humidity to speak of ... a perfect day for our daughter's wedding!!

Here is what I see when I look out my kitchen window.

All that's missing are the Bride, the Groom, and 150 of our closest friends and family.

This is going to be QUITE a celebration!!!

Two by Two

Tomorrow is Wedding Day!  We have spent this whole week working on the remaining items on our never-ending To Do list.  Fortunately, no one seems to have lost sight of the joyous nature of this day that we are preparing for, and we are doing what we can to enjoy the process. 

This wedding of our youngest daughter, adds another link to the chain that is our family.  Marriage is the foundation of family ... and I cannot help but think about the weddings and the families that came together to make THIS wedding possible.

John Harvey Carothers and Celinda Elizabeth (Lizzie) Armstrong

Wedding Day, 1903

My Great-Grandparents

(Our daughter will have my Great Grandmother's wedding ring tied to her bouquet, as her 'something old')

Fannie Viola Carothers and Garland Aubrey Floyd

My Grandparents

The Husband's Parents

1952

My own wedding.

1980

I have many of photos of wedding preparations so far, and I expect to take many more in the next few days.  There is so much happening, and so much to record, and I want to share it all. 

We have what looks like a circus tent in our pasture, where the reception will take place. 

The pavilion under the pecan tree will be the most beautiful ceremony site. 

There are buckets and buckets of flowers sitting on the deck waiting to become arrangements later today.

Don't let me forget to show you the ring-bearer pillows I made.

... and, of course, there's the DRESS!!

This wedding brings together our daughter and a wonderful young man ... and it has brought our entire family together to celebrate ... and celebrate it, we shall.