From the Garden to the Flower shop

One of my wire services hosts a monthly competition, this month the theme for the Cooler Competition (as it is called) was to pull some type of foliage from outside the flower shop and use it in a bouquet.  It could be from anywhere outside.  The flower garden down the street, the tree outside the window, where ever.  I am very fortunate that I have a plethora of choices when it comes to both foliage and flowers when I walk outside my door.

 Everything in the bouquet shown above was plucked, trimmed, yanked or cut from the flower garden in front of the shop, the window boxes on my sidewalk, the field across the street, or the woods next door. 

It was like a treasure hunt.  I found fall blooming crocus in the flower bed, along with heather, the last buddelia of the season, spanish lavender, crocisima pods, and clematis pods.  The abandoned field across the street yielded wild sweet peas, oregano (I know, who would have guessed), a few stems of wild grasses  and black berries (no surprise there), the flower pots had geraniums and petunias.  From the overgrown woods in the lot next door I found what looks like pink yarrow but I know that it is not and some kind of lovely mauve flower that I have no name for.  And of course, more black berries.  I had to fight the spiders for the blackberries but I won that battle.