Enjoy summer flowers, even after solstice celebrations

Summer solstice was last Saturday. The sun reached its highest point in the sky and it was the longest day of the year. Swedish residents in The County held their traditional Midsommar Festival and more than a few wore wildflower wreaths on their heads. Although the solstice party is over, that’s no reason to stop wearing flower wreaths in your hair. The fields will be full of flowers for a few weeks yet.

Kristine Bondeson of Woodland, whose mother was a native of Norway, said the three key wildflowers for making wreaths are purple vetch, red clover and daisies.

Begin with a little bouquet of flowers, she said, and wind it with 20-gauge wire, add another little bouquet, and so on, until you have wound a length of flowers long enough to fit around your head.

“It’s the same idea as making a Christmas wreath,” Bondeson said.

Wire the ends together and tie ribbon streamers around the join. You can insert buttercups, forget-me-nots, lupine and tamarack sprigs to fill in bare spots, she said.

Another way to make a flower wreath, a method I use, is to braid it. Go out into the middle of a field where wildflowers grow. Pick three daisies, leaving the stems long. Bind the daisies together just under the flower heads with a length of grass. Separate the stems, start the braid and braid loosely for three or four inches. Place another three daisies where you stopped braiding, blend the new stems with the first three and keep braiding. It doesn’t matter at this point how many stems there are in each section as long as you still have three sections – it’s a little like French braiding, you add strands as you work.

Continue braiding and adding bunches of daisies, timothy grass and buttercups until you have a length several inches longer than you need to fit around your head. Overlap the two ends and bind with several long strands of grass.

Be patient and don’t expect perfect results. It’s not about being perfect. If the braiding doesn’t quite suit you, try to figure out a way that works.

Who knows? You may invent your own version of fashioning flower wreaths. Work slowly and take time to enjoy the sights and scents of the field. It’s nice to take along a boon companion and several children to help pick flowers. Maybe a dog, too – just for the fun of it. Make wreaths for them. And bracelets for wrists and ankles. And a garland to wear around your neck. It’s never too late to be a “flower child,” especially in this magical week of “longest light.”

Little girls might want to bring home bouquets of wildflowers to put under their pillows – in hopes of dreaming of future loves. The next morning, wearing your pretty flower wreath, which is beginning to dry and becoming beautiful in a different way, and go outside barefoot to collect morning dew, which the ancients believed had healing powers.

Snippets

If you have lavender, sage, oregano, basil or other herbs in your garden, cut a bunch, wrap the stem ends with an elastic band and hang them to dry. When they are dry, roll a lace paper doily into a cone and glue it, using a glue stick, at the center front.

Using a glue gun, glue a few strips of pretty ribbon over the point where you glued the doily together. Let the ribbon ends hang free. Glue a button, a bit of beach glass, a seashell, an acorn cap, or other charm over the ribbon.

Cut some ribbon into a 6-inch length. Fold it in two and glue it, using a hot glue gun, to the back of the cone. This loop will serve as a hanger.

Push some tulle, cut into rounds, into the cone. Place the dried herbs in the cone.

Let the bright memories of these midsummer activities nourish you through the coming months of little light.

Ardeana Hamlin can be reached at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.