Each Monday Cathy at Rambling In The Garden invites us to share an arrangement using materials collected from our gardens. Like much of the United States my state of North Carolina  has been in deep freeze, literally setting records for number of consecutive hours under freezing.

Soon these snowy sidewalks and unfriendly temperatures will be just a memory. By Friday we should see 66 degree Fahrenheit. While waiting for that promised warmup I turned once again to the holiday Hippeastrum (amaryllis) featured in last week’s Monday vase.

At that time the amaryllis sported 4 blooms, sadly it was down to one yesterday. After cutting it from the bulb, I stuffed the inside of the stem with cotton to help it absorb water and placed it into a small Ikebana holder. I fashioned foliage for the normally bare-stemmed flower using bright green and white striped leaves from a Warneckii ‘Lemon Lime.’

For inspiration I chose a special sculptural form to serve both as container and focal point for today’s design.

Our multi-talented daughter is the artist. Now an architect in L.A. she also is a fine woodworker.

The outer casement of her box is mahogany—surface carvings add texture and depth.  A drawer insert made of zebrawood slides opens from either side, revealing three deeply carved pockets (though not pictured, the middle one has a lid).  Because of the dual openings our daughter named this piece, “ambi.”

The Ikebana holder nestles comfortably into the leftmost pocket.

The three large red seedpods seemed necessary to complete the design. 

Materials

Flowers
Hippeastrum (amaryllis)
Seedpods of unknown variety
Foliage
Dracaena deremensis warneckii ‘Lemon Lime’
Container
Carved Box, mahogany and zebrawood

Thanks to Cathy at Rambling In The Garden for hosting each week. Visit her to discover what she and others found to place In A Vase On Monday.