Are you thinking, What a hot mess! when you look at my opening shot? Listen, kid, it’s late October. Everything in the garden was a tad weather-beaten when I cut the Pyracantha berries I knew would glow in an arrangement. But my theatre training tells me something about those raggedy edges and hail-pockmarked leaves. Like stage makeup: It won’t read from the 5th row. Stand back a little to see what I mean. (Squinting helps, too.)

What would go with the berries?

Begonia boliviensis matched the colour perfectly – although they grew in a J-pattern, so had to be put in the vase with the leaves upside-down. Heuchera ‘Brownies’ had leaves changing gorgeously from brownish red to reddish purple. Plus I spotted a few fat shoots of nibbled Tradescantia pallida ‘Purpurea’, a single un-trampled stem of chartreuse ‘Margarita’ sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas), a few limp stems of two forms of coleus (Plectranthus syn. Solenostemon, unknown cultivars), and bits of chartreuse licorice plant (Helichrysum petiolare ‘Lemon Licorice’).

For the vase, a vintage Beauceware dish with a stylized leaf pattern – one of my Value Village finds – fit the trailing arrangement I had in mind. A couple of round floral pin-holders held the stems in place. Here’s the result: my In a Vase on Monday, on Tuesday.

For more inspiration, do visit Cathy’s In a Vase on Monday on Rambling in the Garden. Even if you don’t blog, trying to make something pretty out of odds and sods in the waning garden is such an enjoyable challenge. Give it a try!