A Sunflower Wedding

 

I'm back.  Back from Sioux Falls, where my nephew got married, and back on posting.  I suddenly find myself with some time due to the government shutdown, even though I am excepted from full furlough and have been doing a lot of watering.

 

Erik and Heather had a beautiful wedding, and she made a wonderful choice of sunflowers as her theme flower.  I had never worked with them before, and I became a fan.  The internet allowed me to direct ship hundreds to Sioux Falls, and I flew in early to condition them and start work.  I was concerned about two things from the start.  I didn't find a foliage that seemed right, so I had to forage for that.  Some asparagus in a ditch near Hurley, SD that had been mowed a few weeks ago and grown again in clean green wispiness solved that problem.  The other problem was a line material.  Sunflowers aren't linear flowers, since there is one round head per stem. 

 

I found acres of Maximilian sunflowers, Helianthus maximiliani, growing near Interstate 29 near Worthing, SD.  I went early the next morning to request permission to pick, which I was granted, and I harvested about 50 stems for the wedding.  They were growing four to 12 feet tall, and it was amazing to stand in the field of golden yellow, with the prairie wind setting everything in motion.  The lovely curving leaves of this plant also helped to solve my foliage quandary.



 

 

 

 

 

Here they are in the church.  The church is modern in style, and the arrangements I made were perhaps a bit informal for the space, but they worked.

Brightly Berried Mexican Dogwood Seedlings

I posted when these Cornus florida var. urbiniana seedlings were in bloom.  Today, they caught my eye when I was out giving a tour of the East Side Interceptor sewer line to folks from the District Department of the Environment and DC Water.

These trees are just a few years old, and they are as heavily berried as a 'Winter King' hawthorn.  They had great fall color this fall, and only lost their leaves last week to reveal the berries.  They taste awful, by the way.  Bitter note after bitter note with just a hint of the melony smoothness of Cornus kousa.

Those who know dogwoods know that the four bracts surround a cluster of tiny yellow true flowers.  Typically one or two of those flowers are pollinated, and go on to become fruits.  This dogwood seems to have been very reproductively successful, with a minimum of four fruits in each cluster, with many bearing seven or eight.

Here you can see the fruits along with next springs flower buds.  It seems like such a long time before they begin to unfurl, but the days will start getting longer next week....

Merry What the Heck Mas?

A close friend bought this for me and left it on my desk.  I was audibly startled when I opened the door when I arrived that morning.  At first I thought someone had left a horribly diseased plant on my desk for diagnosis.  I must confess that its bright colors did lift my spirits on some of the gloomy days we've had lately.  I'm not a great fan of poinsettias, probably since I had to grow them prior to breeding advancements that eliminated much of the guesswork in growing a good and uniform crop.