Sourcing for the Seasons: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years

Creating a container, or several, for the upcoming holidays.  With beauty, and without angst.
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Ingredients easily transposed to what you can source.  Sourcing includes what is 'found' and what is purchased. 
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Focus on the shape of your container/s, and the silhouette of your arrangement.  Shapes to copy, below.  Not your traditional garden container shapes/plantings, more, taking from the realm of Florists.
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Pic, above, here.
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Containers, above/below, expensive, even sourced 2nd hand.  Broaden your scope, retaining visions of these, yet transposing to finds at thrift store, junk shop, side of the road on garbage pick-up day.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Adore this Halloween party, above.  Pure stage decorating, feels like a true Birthday party celebration for hallowed souls....
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Transposing, above, I've already sourced velvety & feathered red cardinals to set upon branches sprayed white, going up just after Thanksgiving, and remaining thru New Years.  Branches from my woodland, and those cardinals sourced at dollar store.  Two for a dollar to be exact.
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Easy.  I like pretty, and easy.  And the fun of the hunt.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Top 2 pics look like Deborah Silver's work, but didn't see her credited. 

Florist Shop Technique in Your Garden

I remember well going into the old tiny white clapboard house, engulfed with oleander, gardenias, and sago palms, on the way to League City, TX, with its front half turned into a florist shop, they lived at the back, with mom when she needed to send sympathy flowers.  In the 60's this was not a phone call or internet purchase.  The large glass front refrigerator stuffed with flowers awaiting, scents, vases, ribbons, cut stems in a pile, no, I was not waiting in the car.  Life was electric in that tiny shop & home.
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Saw that house, long abandoned, during my last trip home in December.
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No matter its current state it has sailed a thousand ships in my work.  I have a Pinterest board for Florist Shops.  Clients with acreage, and little time, I send to that board to inspire when they have an open garden or private function.  Temporary beauty easily arranged.
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Claus Dalby, below, from Denmark uses the Florist Shop Technique.  No matter your continent, style, budget, the Florist Shop technique is for you too.    



Pic, above, Claus Dalby.
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Florist Shop Technique.  My favorite type of gardening, see it do it.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Thank you Janelle McCulloch for another great find.

Tool Bouquet

Tool Bouquets, below, used as sconces.

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Begun with rot, aka beloved use, these tools are prophets with honor in Susanne Hudson's garden.

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For centuries mankind honored the connection of tool to Earth as life sustainer.

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Betty Friedan  wrote about the 1st generation of women disconnected from hand-to-tool-to-soil.

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Their children would not learn the names of farm tools, their use, how to raise livestock, plant crops, cook, care take others, much less know how to feed their own spirit.  Bugs & weeds, instead of pollinators increasing crop yield, became poisoned inconveniences.

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Their children played in clouds of malathion as evening trucks fogged mosquitoes.

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(No time to rewrite, for this era, Friedan's work, back to tools.....)

Study Susanne's art of tool arrangement.  She's the best.

An exquisite wedding planner, Susanne treats Tool Bouquet's exactly like flower arranging.

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It's easier to find designer clothes at a thrift store than old tools.

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I'm always on the hunt for old tools.  And, seeing walls, inside or out, needing a Tool Bouquet.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Floral Arranging: Soiree in the Barn

Pair of flower arrangements look 'as if' they've just been gathered from the acres of meadow just outside the barn.

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Hardly.

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I look at My French Country Home for many reasons, mainly, oddly, the floral arrangements.  Sharon Santoni, author of MFCH, is one of the best.  Me do floral arrangement?  Garden design talent only.
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Christine Shockely, artist & floral designer, arranged the garden bouquets for the soiree in the barn last night.
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Christine, above.
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Flowers & greenery from the garden are imperative for the interior of your home.  Vanishing threshold.
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With this client, in addition to the garden gaining new layers, I've had the good fortune to evolve into a posse with her and 2 other compadres.   Yes, we do have an agenda.  And delight in fulfilling it.
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Past a certain age there are important things to do on this Earth.  Regardless of what others may think. We do those things.
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If you're curious about what we do, you aren't old enough yet to know.  If you do know you're a compadre too.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken last night at a client soiree.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.