Ever year on the third weekend in August, my hometown of Cornish, N.H. sponsors a country fair. Not only does it have junk food and rides for the kids, it has ox and horse pulling competitions, woodsman’s events and more. The school is full of photography, art and crafts, 4-H and a chance to show off your best and biggest zucchini. Flower arrangements of all sorts fill a whole room.
If you want to compete in a flower competition, start a week ahead of time. Test out flowers to see if they will look good for 3 days (the length of the fair). Will black-eyed Susans still look good? How about bee balm?
It’s best to pick flowers for an arrangement in the morning when they are fully hydrated and before the heat of the day has had a chance to dry them out. Watering your flowers the night before helps if you’re in a dry spell. Bring a picking bucket when you collect flowers. As soon as they’re cut, plunge them into deep water, but don’t submerge the blossoms. It’s best to pick flowers that are just opening up, not in full bloom.
When you actually make your arrangements, make sure no leaves go in the vase as they will decompose and invite bacteria that will clog up the stems. And re-cut the stems before using them, removing at least 3/4 of an inch of stem. Some folks do this in a bowl of water, but I just cut them and quickly put them in a vase.
What kind of vases work best? That depends on the flowers to be used. I tend to like vases with relatively narrow openings, as they keep the flowers upright. Use heavy vases to keep tall arrangements from tipping over. Pick plenty of stems, and then choose the best to use.
How tall should an arrangement be? An 8-inch vase looks good with the tallest stems about 12 to 16 inches tall. You may want to start an arrangement with a low filler – something with stiff stems that will help keep taller stems upright. Boxwood branches are good for that. Place three, five or seven stems of a particular kind of flower in the vase. Use medium-height flowers then add another variety with slightly taller flowers until the vase seems almost full. Some people obsess about making colors complimentary, but I feel all flowers are beautiful, and look good together. You’ll know what looks good as you make the arrangement. White flowers add a nice counterpoint to the others.
August is a good time of year to visit a botanical garden – it can give you ideas about new plants and interesting designs for your garden. My wife Cindy and I recently visited the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, Massachusetts (near Worcester). It has acres of well-planned gardens on 200 acres with hundreds of perennials, trees and shrubs – all artistically placed.
One of the things I especially appreciated at Tower Hill was their effort to have readily visible labels for most things, with both English and Latin names. I came away with the desire to find two plants I had not seen before: a tree called hornbeam maple (Acer carpinifolium), and a perennial called rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccafolium).
Within a week or so I found rattlesnake master at Rocky Dale Nursery in Bristol, Vermont. It is related to sea holly, but has leaves like a yucca. At maturity it can get to be 4- to 6- feet tall with greenish-white, thistle-like blossoms and a basal rosette of yucca-like leaves. It is hardy to zone 3, and is native to the Midwest. I had seen it once in Ohio in the wild. It likes hot, dry, sandy soil, preferably in full sun.
The hornbeam maple tree was intriguing. It is in the same genus as our maples, but its leaves look nothing like our maples. It is from Japan, and the leaves are like those of a hornbeam. It was growing as an understory tree in the shade garden area at Tower Hill. I loved the smooth gray bark which is a little like our native beech trees. It can get to be 20 to 30 feet tall, is hardy to Zone 4, and does best in full sun to part shade. It’s a gorgeous small tree and I’m keeping an eye out for one.
For me, August is a great month in the vegetable garden. I can eat fresh veggies every day and still have plenty left to put up for the winter. My favorites are the tomatoes. I often eat them three times a day – or more, if you count the cherry Sungolds I snack on in the garden.
I planted 37 tomato plants last spring, and plan to freeze lots of tomatoes for winter use in soups and stews. The simplest method for this is to fit clean, dry tomatoes into zipper bags and put them in the freezer. To use, just run them briefly under hot water in the sink, wait 5 minutes, then rub off the skins (if you like) or just chop them up and cook with them. No canning work involved.
I also dry tomatoes in my Excalibur and Nesco American Harvester food dehydrators. Mainly I dry cherry tomatoes, cutting them in half and arranging on the trays. When dry, the tomatoes can be stored in the pantry, no need to freeze them. I put them in soups and stews where they provide a burst of flavor.
The garden keeps me young: I get exercise, good food, and beauty. Who could ask for more?
Henry Homeyer writes his column just once a month now. You may write him at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746 or email him at henry,homeyer@comcast.net.
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