summer nights

cosmos, cockscomb, firework gomphrena, scabiosa and fern

summer nights during the week find a way of being filled with rose (the drinking kind, not the flower kind), oysters and evening strolls.  and summer time brings the farmers market to life with local fruit, veggie and floral goodies such as the flowers in this arrangement (i'm having a brief obsession with cockscomb and cosmos and bright colors right now).  

c + e wedding

pete and i were way up in maine a few weeks ago to flower up an intimate outdoor wedding complete with beautiful couple, gracious parents (and hosts), a barn, hand-made bars and signs, a few horses and some of the cutest dogs i've ever met (perhaps i say that about all friendly dogs).  this wedding was simply gorgeous!  congrats, c + e!

how so did i ever agree to go from nyc to maine (total trip time is 8 hours each way)?  it wasn't a hard choice, really.  i love outdoor weddings.  i'm a new england girl at heart.  doing weddings outside the normal nyc wedding scene is quite enjoyable.  i have a place to work right outside boston with relatively easy access to the market.  and the bride really wanted to use summer flowers which i could largely source from local growers (NJ, NY and MA).  

the wedding took some work to figure out logistics with ordering, buying and storing flowers outside my normal home base.  we stuffed our little volvo c30 with 12 buckets full of flowers on wednesday night for 4 hour ride to boston.  next day, i went to the boston flower market for more pick-ups and met up with a flower friend, julie of bittersweet gardens, for some of her beautiful poppies.  and later that day, i visited another flower friend, grace of five fork farms, for more poppies, grasses and some of the most amazing sweet peas i've seen grown locally.  dare i say that the quality rivals that of sweet peas from japan?  i met both lovely ladies via instagram (kind of love social media that way) and i hope to have new opportunities to work with them.

and i made flowers standing in my parents' kitchen.  i completely took over the space so we had to order domino's pizza -- yeah, i know, but my parents live in the 'burbs.  we took over a spare bedroom with an old ac unit and blasted that thing until no end (my dad referred to the room as the "cooler" which it totally became).  and there was lots of running back and forth with flowers and finished arrangements.  the behind the scenes pictures are below.

at five fork farms

and a tired florist....