Souvenirs of Summer

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Souvenirs of Summer

PRODUCED AND WRITTEN BY TOVAH MARTIN

 

Let nature's cheer surround you year-round. Here are ideas for

preserving peonies and using mosses and flowers in heartening

arrangements.

 

Between the last rose of summer and the first crocus of spring, you

needn't feel bereft of nature's lovely creations. Here are ways to

surround yourself with memories of summer hours past -- and the

promise of joys to come.

 

Winter peony blossoms? Yes, it's possible -- if you plucked and

treated them in June, as does Esther Davis, a floral artist from

Virginia and author of Sensational Dried Flowers (Rodale). She

gathers hers just before the buds fully open and plunks the stems in

water. Later, she snips the blossoms, leaving just enough stem to

hold the petals together, places them upright in a shallow bed of

silica gel in a plastic ice-cream container, showers them with more

silica gel and stores them, lid shut, for seven to 10 days. Then

Esther dusts each flower (she recommends a cosmetic brush) and seals

it with matte-finish clear acrylic spray.

 

Collections give comfort when the world outside the window grows

bleak and icy. The intricate markings on butterfly wings, the spirals

in seashells, the textures of a bird's nest found blown from a branch

on an autumn walk -- these gleanings become more graphic the moment

you work them into your own still life. And what fairy fantasy rivals

an allium wand, cut before the snow flew?

 

Armloads of dried flowers can simply fill a pitcher or be arranged

selectively in a pretty basket along with mosses, cattails, and other

souvenirs of fields and ponds, left. Consider drying anything from

lamb's ears to grasses, artemisia, yarrow and Siberian iris pods.

 

Who could paint such plumage as the pheasants leave behind? Create a

visual feast on a tray with dried pods of love-in-a-mist and a

scattering of dogwood blossoms (dried just like the peonies but

requiring only four days in silica gel).

 

Rambling Virginia creeper wound into a ball at garden cleanup time

(when you might also have culled stalks for dried arrangements) makes

an earthy ornament. Toss some into a bowl of miscellaneous gourds --

whose seeds, by the way, you can plant next summer.

 

Excerpted from the January 2002 issue of Victoria magazine.

 

http://magazines.ivillage.com/victoria/decorating/decorate/articles/0,

13011,284718_408322,00.html