One of my speaking topics, Grow It , Cut it Arrange It! sums up exactly what I think a garden should be, infinitely shareable. At any time during the growing season I feel like I should be able to go out clippers in hand and return inside with a bounty of flowers, foliage , berries , branches, seed pods, and  even veggies and turn it all into a lovely arrangement  to sit on my table or travel with me to cheer a friend, celebrate an event or grace the table of a favorite neighbor. To that end, I plant lots of things that perform well as cut flowers AND still look good in the garden. Way back in the day there was a separate cutting garden here but that is now the penned in home of the strawberries and the flowers for cutting are instead grown everywhere.

Last  week our library was having an event to commemorate its 125th anniversary, and part of it was a Books and Blooms display. For the uninitiated ( as I was until recently) that is when you are given a book cover and you “interpret ” it with a floral arrangement. Similar things are done in art museums annually using paintings. I was asked to not only interpret a book cover but to also kindly provide two small arrangements for the cake table. I am a huge supporter of our library as I read  and research in hundreds of books a year and the cost without this resource would be astounding , so with a grateful heart I of course said yes! Our local garden club had offered a stipend for the arrangers to purchase floral material, but I can’t even imagine with the wealth of plants in this yard I could ever need one.

My book was called Quite a Year for Plums, by Bailey White.In the interest of thoroughness, I tried to read it,  I really really did, but alas could not  get through it. The story seems very sweet, but not at all my reading taste. Anyway, all I am supposed to be relaying in my arrangement is the cover, so no harm done.

 Here is a picture of the arrangement almost finished(. I am waiting for the official library photos for the final one.)

I wanted to focus on the chickens, or more precisely the chicken on the right, as followers of this blog are aware chickens do not live at The Burrow ONLY because Wil has firmly said “NO!” in a tone that means business, but I love them. I go visit them at the town fairs around us  every year and dream.

Back to the flowers,  I used white peony , flamingo willow , elderberry and blue fescue grass to say “chicken feathers” a clematis called ‘Gravetye Beauty’ to illustrate the beak .  I also added some new growth of a “Fat Albert’ spruce..awesome name… to mimic the sky on the book jacket and tall branches of plum tree leaves and a large branch of a pear tree with teeny pears.

The back of the arrangement mimics the back of the book too

The small table arrangements were ninebark and crabapple branches, peony, red roses, elderberry, guara, Just an FYI, we currently have no kitchen, no sink, no countertops, and for two days no water as a pipe was accidentally cut during our remodel. Therefore my office , which has now become our kitchen, also became floral arranging central.  The library gala was also on the day of a huge fundraiser Bill and I host for the Jimmy Fund Clinic in Boston.  It was all in all the opposite of fun and I hope if I ever get to do it again the timing will work out better. I will say that I am pretty proud of myself ( and the garden ) for pulling it off!