Colors of the Last Day of Summer

In my last post, I mentioned that I've been a little busy lately which is why I haven't blogged as much as usual.  So, before I get back to my 'regularly-scheduled programing', let me just show you a bit about what I was up to.

I love all the colors God created.  Every season has its' special palette.  The last day of summer had very special colors for our family.  Green was very much in evidence, but so was purple, pink, and yellow!  Let me explain.

It all started with seed packets back in January.  Seed packets for a special type of flowers.  You see, my daughter was planning a September wedding and she has always loved dried flowers.  Years ago, I grew and dried flowers as a hobby and to sell a few to make a little extra money, so she asked me about doing dried flowers for the wedding.  I was happy to say, "sure"!  

I doubt many brides-to-be and their mom's start out planning a wedding by looking at seed catalogs, but that's one of the things we did! This summer both my vegetable garden and flowerbeds contained some of the plants that were grown from the seed packs we ordered.

Here you can see the some of globe amaranth and strawflowers in our vegetable garden.

They were also nestled in between the marigold in my flowerbeds.

By the end of summer, the strawflowers were really reaching to the sky!

I was busy picking them everyday to dry, as well as many other types of flowers, such as statice... and wildflowers - goldenrod, joe-pye weed, boneset, and yarrow.

My clothes-drying racks dried flowers, not clothes, this summer!

 

 They all went on racks in my sunroom and then into boxes once they were dry.
Some may have gotten inspected first by Ruby.

These are the beautiful colors of the statice before it is dried.

Then after they were dried, I got busy making flower arrangements of various types.

Arrangements in progress at my work table.

Sara made the beautiful paper flowers in this swag and Dad made the arch they were placed on.

Dried flowers went on the flower girl's basket...

and even the homemade boutonnieres had a few dried flowers in them.

Thanks to Sara for her paper-flower making skills, as she made these, too!

It was a lot of fun for me to grow, dry and make these things, as well as being a "labor-of-love" for my daughter.

I did not make the bridal bouquets... they were purchased, but I think they were lovely.

The colors of the day... green, purple, pink, yellow, and white!