Prairie Wild

Rain drops on flowers.🌸🤍🌧️

1 foxglove (Camelot lavender)
2 garden rose (honey Dijon)
3 salpiglossis (superbissima)
4 love in a puff
5 sweet pea (Mollie Rilstone)
6 aster (?? it was supposed to be tower yellow)
7 borage
8 dahlia (Sandia brocade)
9 bunny tails
10 dahlia (?didn’t check tag)
11 sweet pea (raspberry flake)
12 hyacinth bean

Are you growing any of these in your cutting garden?? If you have any questions about growing these or other things (harvest,design etc) let me know!

I love love love growing violas. This is a brush strokes viola. They do pretty well here in shade during the hottest times because we have cool nights and days don’t often get in the 90s. (I’m using 60% shade fabric...still experimenting)💔💔💔smells so amazing btw. Should I put it in some silica and see how it does?? It will change color to some degree but always a surprise how!

Back at it. Drying with silica gel that is. This was a casual pour a mix of leftovers. I really prefer drying a whole batch of one thing so the drying time is the same but this works too!
Pics
1-flowers on a shallow bed of silica gel
2- half covered
3-another layer of airy things
4-that layer covered with a few stems sticking out...those will dry like any air dried stem would

FLOW with flowers!!!! Every Tuesday morning at 6:30am you will find me on my yoga mat at lions park flowing with Tomorrow morning I’m bringing some flowers for the taking as extra motivation to get to you to your mat. I’ll have these little bunches and similar available to take home for as many community yogis as possible!! Join us...class is $5 and BYOM and take some locally grown blooms home🧘‍♀️💐🧘‍♂️💐

Thinking of summer flowers even though summer seems a long way off. It snowed ❄️in Cheyenne today 😳 just a little. No summer in sight here.

Lisianthus and zinnias are both summer blooms and yet cold hardy lisianthus could be planted for me in a couple of weeks (if I had ordered plugs) under Unheated cover and zinnias will not be seeded as transplants for another month and then spend 4wks in cells until they go into the ground.

I’ve grown some lisianthus from seed but I am convinced it is more time/space/sanity efficient for me to order plugs. The lisianthus pictured is grown from plugs I got in early-may (late) last year and got one flush from.

Growing lisi from seed under lights, I would start it around January 1st (I think, tried end of January last year...too late) is just a battle I’m willing to sub contract out!!! I love lisi when it is locally grown and harvested at its fluffiest state so it’s worth it to me.

I’m figuring out my balance. Deciding what things make me excited to grow and what things I’m just growing because I “should” but make me resent the people who like them. And what things I want but can’t realistically do on my own. All in all I just want to grow what I live. I’m just that selfish that if u don’t like what I like go grow your own 😂 I’ll tell u how.

Just a woman and some things she grew. 🌱🌿🌱🌿Wanted you to see the transformation of my city lot and the process in pictures. How I did things last year. Year 1 on a new OLD property. Things will change from what I learn each year...or week;) Growers on any scale must be adaptable especially in places like Wyoming!!

I started with the dirt lot in the 2nd pic and grew everything you see from seed started under lights in a creepy basement with impossible stairs with no running water😂 also I was learning a new climate. See the ❄️ pic?? That was may 11th 😬

If you haven’t been around for the ride since I bought this property and even if you have been, let me tell you I have have been a frustrated cut-flower grower. Renovations (or holding back because they were supposed to start but never did) have been a huge obstacle and still are. I wasn’t sure what would happen last year. This year is a little better (renos started 🎉)
and yet I’m not making too many plans. What a nice practice in letting go of control! The season will be full but not as productive as it could be.

Anyway, my alternative to a lawn🌷🌸🌼🌻

A little post about dried things because it’s been awhile and I love them. The first pic is of a dried arrangement that includes some silica-dried sweet peas. The pansies and violas were dried in silica as well. The rest traditionally and naturally dried by air.

Sweet peas are a favorite when dried with silica. Not an easy one though. Depending on the color (which shifts with drying check out the 2nd pic to see this one in the field, Oban Bay) sweet peas become more or less like stained glass. Pearly, glassine, ethereal, delicate...even more so than fresh. A specialty reserved for very little movement 😬. Things like these sweet peas can’t be reasonably used in most floral design but to hell with reason 😂 For me it’s an exploration that I’ll keep pursuing.

Yesterday (or maybe the day before...perpetually confused on this earth timeline) I moved a room packed full of these and other dried goodies. When I finally am able to access those things and as the season goes and I dry more I hope to have the space to lay out and share this slightly eccentric pursuit. There are things more reasonable to dry with silica, but I wanted to share the crazier ones too. 🤍💙 that being said I have been terrible at documenting and taking pics to do justice to these pretty little things...goals for 2022 season 📸

This is why I grow❤️ I grow for that salpiglossis 🤤 I grow to make colors come together. To see something go from shriveled roots things or a speck of seed to things like these. It feels like magic. And it kind of blows my mind. I mean really it’s not all that much me (it is complicated the birds and the bees literally and some cool nerds doing flower nerdy things)but it’s pretty cool to have a hand in. And you do have to be fairly determined or inspired to make it happen on any scale. You gotta love being outdoors in all the weather. So on this first day of March in Wyoming it got up to 60 and I wore shorts. And maybe that was what I needed to get my butt in gear...my fave, the sun, planting that seed of hope that winter will eventually end. This is another year of uncertainty in my garden as renos finally happen but you’ll still see me with flowers sometime this spring/summer/fall. Maybe by fall I’ll know what the heck is going on.

Winter update. ❄️🌕 It’s cold in Wyoming. But not that cold. And today it snowed a bit. I’m glad to report I’ve rarely needed to deny myself a run/walk and boy do I need that sunlight and fresh air. You may be wondering about what I’ve been up to with flowers and all my house renos cuz it has been a long time. Well things are starting to move along both because of man and nature. Renos are finally underway and that stack of bulb crates is the beginning of 2022 season (very last pic). It will be popping before I can blink. Because of space I could not start my own seeds (well u know I’m crazy so there may be a few) so someone else is doing it for me. 🙏. No shame in My non-seeding game in 2022. I’ll be back at it eventually cuz I do love the process and some other benefits but for now space/sanity came first and I am so grateful for the option. And so sorry for my longggg break but life ya’ll❤️🙃🌸 now let’s get weird this full moon and beyond.

Dried with silica. Dahlias + one random rose.

My light inside was too low so I took the chance and laid this out outdoors. Ummm bold move on a windy Wyoming day. So basically ignore that flipped over bloom...or two. I’m for the imperfectionists.

This was one container worth of dahlia heads.

Yarrow + hydrangea...dried

That drip💧tho. Intimate moments with dried hydrangea. The start of an idea...we’ll see how it grows.

Anyone else save all their fall hydrangea trimmings for fall/winter decor?? I’m a fan!! These are from my mom’s yard...always looking for friends and fam yards to Edward scissorhands.

With nice warm sunny days being numbered for both me and fresh flowers, I could not stay inside today!! So I made a little something against my shed.

Although most of this is fresh I added dried cress, purple fountain grass, and bee balm. One of the benefits of drying is having more material when your small-ish garden may not provide enough to fill an order or complete a design💜💛

For the fall equinox. Honoring life and death. Shadow and light. A prayer. A meditation on a sunny day. A wreath. Little bunches of dried hydrangea, ammi, apple of Peru, and bee balm wired to a bamboo hoop. Exposed mechanics.

Drying rudbeckia in silica. Another WILD Friday night 🌼🌼🌼🌸🌼🌼🌼🌻🌼

I dry flowers in silica. It makes a short spring, summer, and fall last through the long Wyoming winter. It’s pretty simple to do if you have the time and space. Check out the link in my bio for the supplies I use and “silica” in my story highlights if you are interested in seeing how I do it.

Half wreath, half arrangement...the centaur of florals for this odd time where I want summer to stay forever but others are like “sweaters and pumpkin spice”. It’s gonna be in the 90s this week so guess who’s winning??

Combining fresh flowers from@the garden with easy to hang dry grape vines + silica dried phlox

I’ve shown how I dry and wire the phlox in previous posts✨All grown in Wyoming🌸 vine from Nebraska🍇

True blue flowers are a short list and I tried to use the ones I grew to make this one.
Starting at the 2nd pic, Ingredient list:
2) kew blue salpiglossis and blue delphinium
3) dried Bella Donna delphiniums
4)tweedia
5)dried pale blue statice, dried foxglove, yellow Valkyrie aster, fresh Delphi’s, dried grasses, yarrow
6)summer pastels yarrow
7) the ratio of dry (left bucket) and fresh (right bucket)

Blue flowers to commemorate today’s BLUE moon. Foraged grasses and vines, flowers grown in my garden. Also swipe to see I’m a veg grower = domestic goddess.

Can you spot the dried flowers?? They are there helping make this design more eco-friendly and easier to make. 💙💙💙