Sogetsu BuxMont Study Group Exhibition - " Fall into Ikebana "

The exhibition was held on 10/8/2016. The study group members had been working so hard and attentively. We had more than 25 arrangements plus a huge beautiful center piece by our teacher Meei Huey Lin . It was a successful exhibition and attracted more than a hundred people to come to see it.
At first, l would like to show my two arrangements:
1) " Wandering Around Nature"  is a traditional free style design. I followed the theme using a piece of long vine (wild grape vine?), it is soft enough to bend around my old Japanese ceramic vase.   Seasonal Firethorn berry, Hydrangea and not so dried Hosta leaves to complete my arrangement.
2) " Moon Shine" is a contemporary design. This metallic crescent moon with silvery Allium seed pods and hydrangea symbolizes the shining stars in the October Autumn sky.
The third picture is our teacher's center piece, it is really beautiful! The rest of other pictures follow below.

"Fall into Ikebana"

Autumn Galore. By Chih Huang

Fall Festival. By Latitia Chen 

Evergreen Fall.
 By Mary Swierczynski

Ikebana and Food in Dialogue
By Betty Tsai

Golden Fall
By Betty Tsai

My fall into Ikebana
By Grazynka Shaarani

Skyfall. By June Wu

Broke back Mountain. By June Wu

Go Modern.
 By Meei huey Sensei

Uplifting.
By Doris Liu

Dancing with Me.
By MeeiHuey Sensei

Enchanted Melody.
By doris Liu

Phoenix. By Ying Chen

Autumn's Loss. By Mary

Night at Abandoned City. By Chih Huang

"Ohara Autumn"

The first meeting of the Ikebana International was held on 10/6/2016. The opening luncheon was with a demonstration by Ingrid Luders, the recipient of the Meiji Ichijikin Award for her outstanding contributions in the promotion of Ohara school. Every piece of her demonstrations were beautiful! I especially like the first picture below, using six giant painted Allium seed pods and glass tubes for flowers, no kazens. It is stunning!

Arrangement using Fall grasses and late Summer flowers

The purple flat bean flowers were from my friend's vegetable garden. I arranged them into a big deep purple wine glass. The materials of  the other arrangement were collected from an open field, there were Fall grasses and late Summer flowers. I chose the basket for late Summer coolness and the title (Hata Sensei's assignment).

September Orchid Bloom

This September I have been getting back to my regular activities like ikebana classes, garden club, and orchid society meetings. It's been a year since I attended an orchid society meeting. I had four orchid blooms this month for the show table (below). Now that we are in a smaller house, I have to reduce my orchid collection, so I donated six plants for the society this month.

Cattleya "Roman Holiday"

Cattleya, No Name. very nice fragrant 

L. Purpurata var. carnea x Bl. Richard Mueller
Long lasting flower, some time bloom twice a year

L. Benice Foster. Richard Mueller x B.cordata
" Lady of the night" fragrant at night

Prepare for Exhibitiona

Meei-Huey Sensei and her students have been busy forming a study group during the Summer. It is named Sogetsu BuxMound Study Group ( Bucks County and Montgomery County). So our first exhibition will be held early next month on 10/8/2016.
From now on, every piece that we arrange in the class should keep in mind preparing for the exhibition.

Materials : Vine,firethorn berry, mum and hosta
Container: Japanese antique bronze vase

Repeating Similar forms or Shapes arrangement
Horse tail, phlox and Crepe myrtel in the ceramic
container.

Ikebana Class - Two Free Style Arrangements

My daily life is almost getting back to normal, day by day. This past two months my husband and I were so busy trying to settle down to our new home, we plan to live here for rest of our life. It is a beautiful place. Its surrounding is the historic Washington Crossing Park. General Washington crossed the Delaware River here to attack British on Christmas night during Revolution War.
I found a piece of  wood trunk here in the park long time ago. I have been keeping it and now I could use it for my August Ikebana class.

One piece of  wood trunk, Sunflower, Cornflower and  Magnolia
Ceramic container placed under the wood trunk

 Horsta, Japanese Anemone, phlox, willow and honeysuckle
vine in ceramic container which color match the flowers.  

July, August Orchids Bloom

Our new house is now finished, and we have been moving this past month. It has been a very stressful time, and I haven't been able to pay attention to my orchids but they surprised me with their blooms this Summer. Now, the blooming orchids are in the new home, except the rest of the orchids still are staying outside of my old house. By October, all the orchids will be in the new house before it gets cold. With all this stress, and without materials organized or brought over from the old house, I haven't been practicing ikebana. I'm also just too tired to think about it. I will also be missing the August's class. I feel my life is miserable right now!

E. Mariae.  It has been blooming more than 5 weeks.

Dendrobium. Division of same plant.

Hall way of my new home. Lady Slipper orchid
is still blooming.

Free Style - Stokes Aster

I have been going to physical therapy for three weeks now since recovering from our car accident. Besides that we are in the moving process to our much smaller house. It's been really hectic, busy and tiresome these couple months. I feel like I need to have calm and quiet time for myself. Doing Ikebana is my meditation!

Materials: Stokes aster, Solomon seal, and walking stick.

Lady's Slipper Orchid - Pinocchio

The Paphiopedilums are called "Lady's Slippers". My Paphiopedilum is also called "Pinocchio" because it  keeps blooming, and the stem is growing longer and longer like Pinocchio's nose. This is one of my favorite orchids. I have been growing this orchid for many years. I also divided my first one into another plant a few years ago. These two lady's slippers have been blooming every year ever since. The continuously growing stems produce the sequential blooming flowers which can last for months. (6/9,7/4 and 7/15/2016)