The beginning of this last week has been very warm. Great weather for being in the garden to pull out all those weeds that have also been enjoying the warm weather; and doubling or tripling in number, it seems. In addition to the proliferation of the weeds, the spring flowering plants have been flourishing also.
I had pruned the Broom Cytisus scoparius hard in the winter, as it was looking straggly and unhealthy. I cut out a few secondary stems to try to improve the shape of the bush. However, the wind got the better of the new growth and made the bush asymmetric again. Recently, when I looked at it closely, I decided I rather liked the leftward leaning stems and decided to use some as the starting point for my ikebana.
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I cut some stems and arranged them with a slightly more upward movement than was the case on the bush. To hold them at this angle I have used a 'cross bar' to stop the main stem from flipping out of the vase. I then added a very dark Aeonium 'Zwartkop' rosette, Aeonium arboreum, for its contrasting colour and form. The hand-built vessel is by my ikebana colleague and friend from Sydney, Margaret Hall.
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Rather than waste the remaining Broom flowers that I had collected, I trawled the garden and noticed a particularly tall, straight-stemmed Strelitzia reginae. The ikebana from these materials is formal, in the style my first teacher called a "Shin" arrangement. The materials arise from the centre of the bowl-shaped vessel with the elements reaching upward from a single point.
I bought the bowl at the Potters Cottage Warrandyte in the mid 1970s. It has a brushed wax resist design in the centre of bowl but, unfortunately, no potter's mark.
Greetings from Christopher
25th October 2027
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