white and pink peonies with freesia and ranunculus

A beautiful day at the Wildflower Center... and some very elegant flowers.

yves piaget roses and phalaenopsis

cream, orange, green and blue at palm door

See those little bells of lily of the valley? First time I've ever worked with it in all these years of doing weddings. What a beautiful smell... hardier than I would have thought too. It stood up to the 90 degree heat today just fine (watertubed), which is more than I can say for myself.

candy colored ranunculus with coleus and filbert

We set up some Moulin Rouge themed flowers at the Littlefield House on the UT campus today, what an amazingly preserved Victorian house. I hope we get to work there again... Yummy food by Meg and her team at Spoon & Co.

ruffly and bright

Oh those sweet peas! All the gorgeousness of spring...

coral garden roses with peonies and feverfew

eggplant, mustard and white with feverfew

Begonia and grapevine foliage made the bride's bouquet. Loving the mustard and eggplant color scheme in the maid's... Have you ever smelled the crushed leaves of feverfew? Wow, what a fresh and interesting smell.

mint ice cymbids, grapevine and lilies

Fresh greens and whites at Umlauf Sculpture Garden...

country club pink and white wedding

blue, yellow and white flowers with succulents

The arch for this wedding turned out to be one of my favorites, and it looked great at Parkside, where the guests are seated at their dinner tables to view the ceremony. The little frittilaria and succulent blooms made the bouquet and cake decorations!

succulents, ranunculus and craspedia

The talented Melanie at She-n-He Photography sent me a link to a recent wedding we provided the personal flowers for. I love all the details and the emotion these images captured! Thanks Melanie for capturing the flowers so well too.

The bride and her houseparty created all the centerpieces! Don't the colors look great sitting outside her room at the Hotel San Jose?

local bouquet, and some thoughts

I took a walk tonight... I really needed one. Everyone was out and about, soaking up the last days of coolness before the heat settles in. Southerners will understand this.

I walked past cooking-dinner smells, and fully-open-garden-rose smells, and fresh-mown-grass smells. I ate mulberries off the tree in a busy corner of Shipe Park. I walked away with purple stained fingers and a smile... I'm a forager now.

I needed the walk because we've had some serious things going on over here. Life-changing things. Things that make you lie awake at night and wonder which of your many dreams are going to come true. Because don't we only get a certain number that make it all the way to reality in this life?

I had minor surgery two weeks ago. It was a Tuesday. That same day I received an email asking if I'd like to work on a project that I've been dreaming about for a long time. Of course I would! I might have even hopped up and down. But this is a project that involves many people, and if it's one thing a small business owner has a hard time with it's sharing control of a project.

So I have lots of growing and learning to do. It's time. I'm at a good point with Pollen; the business is swimming along and growing on it's own. Our sales figures from last year surprised me (so did the actual profit, but in the opposite way). I still love the day-to-day... the wedding set-ups and making something beautiful for someone's birthday. But I have other things I'd like to experience within this floral life.

This is a beautiful wedding we did on March 24th, with about half locally-grown flowers.