Deck the Halls!

Garlands are my one of my favorite holiday decorations. I love just the way they greet and welcome visitors to my home during the holidays.  This year, I used 16 feet of cedar garland wrapped with white lights, and use ornaments to create a theme. To create a musical theme,  I tied off large golden instrument ornaments that I purchased years ago at a floral store in Florida. Bright red winter berries from my yard add texture and seasonal color to the evergreen garland.  Then, to add a layer of luster, I draped a peppermint and colorful candy glass garland. Bows are always the final touch to finish the arrangement--as anyone who knows me, knows I am completely bow obsessed and collect a variety of rich and unusual ribbon! See details in pics below!

A festive welcomes

Layering of Textures

Ornaments to Create Theme

Lights Brighten &
Warm the Dark Cold Night

Shabby Chic Christmast Tree

While holiday shopping locally with friends in Petaluma, we stumbled upon this shabby chic Christmas Tree in a shopping square in old town's theater district. I loved their choice in ornaments, a variety of painted white old flea market finds including: bird cages and ornate frames, and chandeliers. What a unique and artful inspiration for seasonal decorating! Great shopping too, especially http://www.marisasfantasia.com/.

Happy Holidays! Maya

A Seasonal Celebration: Blooms, Berries, Twigs, and Sprigs

I just added berries and a few evergreen sprigs to a locally grown flower
bouquet from Trader Joe's; then arranged them in a cool mercury glass pedestal bowl

It is hard to believe my late summer flowers are still hanging on in my garden even though it is Dec 12. With the cold monochrome colors of the season emerging in the natural open space surrounding my home, color still prevails against the gray frosty mornings in my garden. The blooming die-hards in my garden include: roses, blue bachelor’s buttons, black-eyed Susans, zinnias., marigolds, and coreopsis among other varieties.  However, it is time to prune, as most are fragile from the morning frosts, and look to bringing in the abundance of this season’s robust evergreens for bouquets and seasonal decor.

Winter in Woods near my Home

Color Prevails in my Garden
Dec 11, 2012

On your neighborhood walks or hikes take a moment to appreciate and discover the evergreen branches and bright bursts of color found in a variety of berries and fruits that hang like ornaments.  Bring these berries, twigs, and sprigs into your home to create festive seasonal decorations; and sometimes you can find them in your own backyard. Below are just a few colorful berries found in my garden:

I have already begun to gather trimmed evergreen branches from the local Christmas tree lot, and pick bright bunches of berries from my yard to create wonderful seasonal arrangements.  For centuries, evergreens branches have been gathered as garlands and wreaths to celebrate life during this cold barren season. I have been having fun using them in seasonal table arrangements.  See some of my recent favorites!

Ice Will Reveal by Julia Dvorin Book Launch Arrangements

Old Maple Syrup Tin with Seasonal Sprigs and Berries

Let It Snow Cupcake Party
for Miller Creek Middle School Library

Remember to celebrate the season with what grows locally and in abundance.  It will make your decor and arrangement seem beautifully authentic to your natural environment and home.

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year! Maya xo

We are ready to celebrate the season at my house!

Celebrate Today with My Garden Bouquets!

 

First ” Official” Today’s Bouquet Made for a Parent Meeting at Marin Academy!

Today, I am so excited to officially announce my new backyard homegrown bouquet business! My bouquets offer varieties of heirloom and homegrown flowers, and are an alternative to standard generic super market bouquets.  Today's Bouquet flowers will be fresh and sustainably grown in my garden, and on local farms in the Bay Area.

Today’s Bouquet as a micro-backyard business has been an organic process that first developed through my FB posts of bouquets from my garden; and over this summer grew into my garden blog; and since, it is quickly evolving into a channel for my crazy creative energy!

Each day, I have always loved to bring in cut flowers, greens, and leafy twigs from my garden and walks in the open space into my home, no matter what season, and I hope to share this abundance and beauty with my friends and community. 

Celebrate each day with a garden fresh bouquet!

Thanks to all my FB friends for your encouragement, inspiration, and support!

Read more about Today’s Bouquet

Happy Birthday Sundae Bouquet with Sprinkles on Top!

To celebrate my dear friend's birthday  who happens to be a huge FB gal, I tried to recreate in flowers my signature birthday post, "Happy Bday with Sprinkles on Top!" My new hydrangea "Lime Light" inspired my whimsical bouquet with its soft chartreuse flowery heads that reminded me of dripping scoops of ice cream, which begged to be placed in a dessert dish for presentation complete with sliver spoon topped by sheer lavender polka dot bow!

 I just had to look to my garden to complete the details of my delectable festive and flowery sundae dessert bouquet including: white flox and white/purple lantana for whip cream and topped with a fragrant pink rose. Oh yes, don't forget the sprinkles on top: mini blooms of pink Gomphrena with orange tips!  : P

   

Let your blooms inspire your bouquet

   Gomphrena

Purple Lantana

2012 Olympic Bouquets Score Gold!

The 2012 Olympic organizers should get a gold medal for the lovely nosegays--tiny bouquets presented as gifts to medal-winning athletes upon the podium in the Victory Ceremonies. The Victory Bouquets of the 2012 Olympic Ceremonies symbolize the absolute BEST of the host country at the 2012 Olympics. Not only are the hand tied fragrant bouquets of elegant design and bring a touch of the English countryside gardens to the Games, but also these nosegays are totally created with good eco-intention-- grown and made locally and sustainably. 

The 2012 Victory bouquet with the signature grouping of blooms reflects the design of late, Jane Packer, an internationally renowned UK florist. Each nosegay reflects the vibrancy and energy of the Games with the four sections, each holding a different variety of the rose. Roses are a culturally iconic flower for the British, and the ones being used are Illios (yellow), Marie Claire (orange), Wimbledon (green) and Aqua (pink). Each section is also divided with traditional and fragrant garden herbs – English lavender, rosemary, apple mint and wheat.  Olympians will take home their medal and a locally and sustainably grown fragrant English garden bouquet as a keepsake of their trip to the UK.

From start to finish all 4, 400 Victory Bouquets were created locally and sustainably from local fields. All of the blooms and sprigs of the bouquet are home-grown from local fields, and assembled and delivered at the time of the Games by college and floristry students from across the UK.  The heady scent, vibrant color and romantic appearance of the 2012 Victory Bouquet is the quintessential symbol of the energy of the games and also the timeless tradition of the English garden.

Growing the LOVE in your Gopher Infested Garden

This week I discovered a wonderful new product to help encourage the LOVE energy in your garden, even though you may be waging a full on war with your gophers that inhabit it.

Grow Master-Gopher Baskets protect plants roots from gophers.

Grow Master --Gopher Basket by Western Planting Solutions (at Pini Ace Hardware in Novato) protects the roots of your plants with a very fine and extremely flexible wire mesh bag/basket.  So EASY! They are flexible wire mesh with much more flexibility than the super stiff handmade Chicken or Aviary wire baskets. Affordable too! They have a beautiful, fine, and fluid wire shape--that from my perspective and because I love them so much-- evokes the work of the great wire artist, Ruth Asawa--especially after working with the painful rustic aviary wires! Ok, maybe I'm  slightly exaggerating, but if you ever struggled with making your own root baskets, you know! These are like works of art!  Ha!

Grow Master Baskets come in Mini, Quart, 1/2 Gal, 1 Gal, and1-3 Gal, 5 Gal, and 15 Gal sizes!  Brilliant! Hope our Marin County gophers can't chew through the fine and  flexible mesh! So happy to find it-- thought I would share this new product. Will keep you posted...so far- so good.

Products like this allow me to continue to garden with love and joy. This has not always been the case:

The day I made peace with the gophers in my garden is the day my garden began to really flourish.  I have been working my garden for over 13 years and battling the gophers for about a good six years. On a daily basis, Marin County gophers can suck the joy out of any gardening experience. These critters make gardening a negative and angry experience and can transform your garden as a place of dark energy like no other.

For years, I vowed to annihilate the little beasts which cross into my yard from open space to eat everything in my garden as if it was a Fast Food Drive Thru. I launched full on assaults with every gopher deterrent and device in my traditional arsenal of weapons of mass extermination. In desparation, I have even fantasized pumping gas into the tunnel and igniting it! (See Rodinator).

One morning about 6 years ago,  I woke up to find all 10 delphinium that I planted the morning before, gone. My eye catching one last wiggling stem at the end of the bed, only to disappear instantly down into the hole--as if a cruel scene in a cartoon. That day, I threw up my hands and peacefully surrendered to the tiny beasts.

My new approach was to peacefully co-exist, embracing the little furry friends by actually planting some flowers for them and making baskets out of stiff aviary wire to protect roots of the many plants for my garden. This made gardening more laborious, but the battle was over. As peace began to grow in my garden, so did my love for it,  and it began to flourish.  Planting of course was a total drag.  My choice was either make the rigid baskets of aviary wire, or buy the pull apart ones that are so difficult that you need to channel Herculean strength to open; then dig a hole to accommodate the odd shapes of these root  baskets which seems to always leave gaps that the soil doesn't always fill. Grow Master's new more flexible root basket by Grow Master makes planting a breeze and helps to continue my love of gardening, eventhough I still have gophers in my garden!

I want to give a BIG HUG and Kiss to the Brilliant mind behind the Grow Master--Gopher Basket! Planting is SO much eaiser!!!!!<3

Bright Begininng

Today seemed to be a nearly perfect summer day in the Bay Area, and moved me gather a sunny bouquet from my garden including Just Joey and a variety of yellow roses, with orange milk weed, and tiny yellow sprigs of creeping zinnias.  An appropriate symbol and expression of a bright new beginning of sharing and inspiration.