In a vase on Monday, on Tuesday

I've been following a fun garden blog meme closely for the past several months, enjoying the creations that friends Loree and Peter have been creating every week. It's called In a Vase on Monday and is brought to you by Rambling in the Garden. Every Monday I see some of the wonderful vases that my friends put together and show us, and every week I think "I'm going to do that next week". Then I forget and the next Monday's posts remind me again. Sigh.

This week though Loree wrote something in her post that inspired me. She said something like "I'll be pruning anyway, so why not bring the cuttings inside the house?" That made the light bulb go on over my head and got me outside. It's not that I have lots of prunings to contribute to a vase, but I do have an incredible amount of weeding to do. Why not use my weedings (probably not a word) in a vase?

***

I actually did start with some prunings though, as the Artemesia ludoviciana is getting a bit tall already, and I'd prefer not to have to stake it up this year. The silvery foliage is perfect for what I had in mind (photo above).

I also wanted to use a single peony bloom:

So fragrant!

What else... how about some black locust tree blooms, swept up from the driveway:

Wait, what? Sweepings? In a vase? Stay with me...

The main component of my vase will be Perilla:

I have hundreds upon hundreds of these seedlings to eradicate, so why not put them to good use...

...by layering them in a simple glass vase!

The silver and white (well, cream now as they're browning) would provide great contrast I thought.

Not too bad, although the colors aren't popping as much as I'd hoped for.

Luna agrees that it does smell great!

One thing about using straight-from-the-garden components...

...is that you get some extra surprises, like this katydid nymph!

I took all of those photos with the vase dry. Next step was to add the water:

That made the colors much more vibrant!

The vase stayed on the kitchen counter after that, as it was filled almost to the rim with water, and I was not going to move that into a cat zone and risk an epic mess!

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Please let me know what you think about my first In a Vase on Monday contribution! (Head over there for many more "in a vase..." creations!)

This is probably just a one or two-day vase, as I suspect the submerged foliage will start decaying quickly. Ah well.

.