Celebrate summer blooms in bouquets! How many different kinds of flowers can you pick? How do they smell different? How does the bouquet look with different stem lengths and flower positions? (Only pick a flower when you see there are many others and never take more than half.)
Here’s a sampling of what’s flowering in northern VT now:
Display your bouquet inside and consider making them on a regular basis to track the changing blooms throughout the summer. You might want to record the timing of flowers in your bouquet to compare to future years, like the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium. Since 1903 Fairbanks volunteers have collected wildflowers to display at the Wildflower Table and kept a record of their first bloom date.
Always surprised to find the flower ensembles that grow with gorgeous color and texture, particularly in fields and trailside. Clouds of bedstraw with spikes of color from hawkweed and cinquefoil are just a few I’ve seen lately together.
I think that these natural bouquets are more a summer thing, after the delights of spring ephemerals have disappeared from view.