Saturday morning means home-baked chocolate croissants (even if they are frozen from Trader Joe's) and a trip to the Burbank Farmer's Market. There is always the Skyline Farms flower vendor, with plenty of beauties from quirky ranunculus to this week's BrainFlower, Celosia cristata, or Cock's Comb. They also had some incredible big and fragrant backyard roses for just a buck a stem. But I also made a stop to my favorite guy (who will remain sadly nameless because my phone was dead and I have a sieve for a memory) who packs beautiful proteas, eucalyptus and whatever else is blooming (birds of paradise & hydrangeas today) along with his fruits & veg.  

I've been doing some floral still life off and on for a few years, and am now going at it more recently as an exercise in keeping loose. I like to balance the cool aloofness of lazily jotting down the lines of the flowers and adding notes of colors.  A suggestion of their personality together with a little bit of designed quality of a translation, and I get some pretty satisfying little areas of the paintings that are becoming more popular the more I make. Can't wait to attack this huge bunch of pretties this weekend!

When a rose gets droopy, just pop it's head off in your hand and admire a completely fresh side of the bloom, if only for a moment.

This year, I have decided to make this blog a true web log - a way to keep track of something new I learn everyday. So far, I have been logging my lessons, findings and facts in my phone calendar, but I will begin posting these here, now. Today's entry will include the past week's. I hope I am able to add photos to make this much more exciting, but for now, it might just be a list:

Jan 1 - A drive to Malibu is always a good idea.

Jan 2 - I will never again take modern plumbing for granted.
Jan 3 - I get sad when my mom leaves. Every time. Yeah, living so far from family is rough.

Jan 4 - Spanish moss, found in the trees in the deep south like FL - is apparently covered in hard-biting chiggers. Never touch this.




Jan 5 - According to Dom, dogs should not eat walnuts.

This time last year, I had already settled into the fact that I wasn't going to find the right materials for my dream centerpieces - succulent dog topiaries! Our wedding theme consisted of our colors: Mint & Marigold, a little bit of Moroccan influence, succulents, and our two fur babies, Beatle and Nietszche. It would have been perfect to carry the dog motif from the invitations to the tabletops, but alas, no affordable dog topiary forms that fit my under-10k-for-the-whole-thing budget could be found. I had grown, collected and foraged for the succulents that would eventually be made into modern white and gold-sprayed centerpieces that worked and were beautiful.  




But last week on a trip down an aisle in Target's garden area, I found an end cap with these amazing wire dogs. There they were! The form for my dog topiary! Only a year late, but marked down from $40 to $12! So I had to get one and and make my little guy for the back yard.

So I read the DIY's for succulent dog topiary (read only - http://www.pallensmith.com/articles/16475) and realized that what I needed wasn't moss and soil, but just moss. Apparently the succulents are able to actually root in the moss. Now I am a bit skeptical on how long the succulent sculpture will last, considering how easily it seems the moss will dry out, but we'll see.  So, Step One - get a STURDY wire form (chicken wire is too flimsy for the heavy succulents). Some people say to spray with rustoleum, but I didn't.

So, Step Two is to wet the moss. In a large bowl filled 1/2 way with water, I wet first the Spaghnum, (which easiy falls apart when you rip and cut it, so I'm glad I also got the second kind of moss two which is sturdier). Then you squeeze out the Spaghnum and poke it through your holes using a chopstick or your fingers. When that's all done, Step Three is to wet the green moss and add that so that way the moss is in there really tight, and the green moss looks prettier, IMO. Step Four is to gather your succulents, trim some leaves if they are a growth off of another stem, but keep ones with roots if you have them (like baby ones on there own, close to the dirt). You just make a hole in the moss, and poke 'em in there. And boom -  succulent topiary!

Wait until it dry before watering. This gives the succulents time to root because the water can wash away delicate roots. Oh, and if you have one-sided parts of the metal form, like my legs are, you can add moss there and wrap with wire, too, and succulent-ize that.