Four Days till the Wedding!

I had to count out the days on my fingers. That must mean something but I don't know what.

Yesterday I took time out from making icing flowers and did some work with real flowers. The wedding is so close and there's so much to do so I'm not sure why I went out to the deck in the first place.

The first thing I saw was a planter that had the remains of a palm in it. Why on earth would a gardener plant a palm in a hanging basket? Duh. I bought the hanging basket pre-planted at Home Depot two years ago. It looked cute, with a little palm tree in the middle and some geraniums and begonias in it. The geraniums and begonias were happy but of course the palm tree grew straight up until it hit the roof. It was very healthy but I could tell it needed to be in a better spot than 3' under a roof. Don't palm trees get really big? I kept the hanging basket on a table this year and it did fine until a freak frost killed the palm. So I chopped the palm off.

Yesterday I saw the sawed off stub of the palm tree in the hanging basket and decided to yank it out. I pulled and it didn't budge. I yanked at it and pulled and struggled and ended up lifting half the dirt out of the basket. What I pulled out was downright creepy. It was a massive root system, all gnarly like some tendrilled disease. Shiver! I told one of the boys to plant it out in the backyard somewhere just in case it might grow and filled in the huge gaping hole in the planter with more dirt.

I guess struggling with that root was a good thing to do. All day I had bent over a table forming delicate flowers out of sugar paste by hand. Tearing through the dirt with bare hands was enormously satisfying. I think I even grunted once.

Here are some of the flowers I've been working on the past three days.

Sugar paste, or "pastillage" is really fun to work with but you have to work fast because it dries out quickly as you work. The roses have to be made in stages over a course of days to allow for drying. This photo was taken before the green calyxes were added.



















The sprays of blossoms are made of hundreds of tiny white flowers, each cut out of sugar paste and then cupped and formed by hand. They add the "baby's breath" element to an icing floral arrangement. Sweet.