Winter Flowers

On Sunday afternoon, in anticipation of a long day inside on Monday because of wretched weather, I went for a run.

As I trotted around our ghost village, I passed some plants on the side of the road that I remembered noting in the summer. They looked like small corn plants, and I had guessed they had grown from some feed that fell out of our neighbor's truck. There were only a few of them, but they stood out because they had turned red as they died and dried out, and they still maintained their red color.

A lot of the plants here turn interesting colors in the fall when they die, mostly reds, oranges, and yellows. If I pick them earlier in the fall, they will stay those colors in the house. But if they stay out, the colors get much more muted when the very cold weather arrives. These corn plants (or whatever) had stayed quite red.

So I decided to pick one of them and make a winter arrangement with whatever else I could find. I gathered several different things on my last lap around the village, and when I got home, I put it all together.

I used sunflower seed heads as my anchor flowers, with dried kochia and grasses as the background plants.

The sunflower seed heads are a range of colors, from a darker orangish brown, to light brown, to even white.

Close up of the plant that started it all.

This is obviously a highly flammable arrangement, so we have to careful with the candles on the table. 

Looks cool, though.

I find this kind of flower/weed arranging to be the most satisfying. Making something beautiful from nothing special is my favorite thing to do. And I'm happy to have something pretty to look on my table again.