Introibo- with Flowers

This year for the Feast of the Assumption, the pastor of our little country parish asked if I would help create a processional litter for the statue of Our Lady.    He had the great idea of repurposing an old table!  It seemed Our Lady was smiling down on me that day when I walked into the thrift store and there it was for twenty dollars: a perfect square, three foot, solid oak table. A few months ago, my kind friend, mentor, and owner of Altarations Paraments in Oregon sent me a box loaded with remnants of liturgical fabric.  I added a white skirt around the bottom to hide the table legs and a carpenter attached brackets for the removable oak rods.  I was a bit nervous about creating the arrangements for the litter. They needed to be as light as possible and secured to the litter to withstand being jostled about in the procession.   I found four plastic oval platters at the dollar store, added a block of wet foam, taped it in place and created the arr...

Altar arrangements for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost: light blue hydrangeas, orange crocosmia, centranthus, with breath of heaven and privet greens from my garden.

Altar flowers for the ninth Sunday after Pentecost.  Fresh flowers from the summer garden: gladiolus, hydrangeas, lilies and variegated privet. This has been an incredible week for the Church.  I will refrain from much commentary.  However, I would like to say how grateful we are to our good Bishop Robert Vasa, who has protected our diocesan Latin Mass community and allows for its continuation.   We pray for those who have lost their parishes and those who are persecuted wordwide- unable to worship almighty God at the Traditional Latin Mass.  Here are the words from the collect for the ninth Sunday after Pentecost: Let Thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of Thy suppliant people: and that Thou mayest grant their desire to those that seek, make them ask such things as please Thee.  

  Things have been very busy this month of June.  While the Vatican is threatening and traditionalists are conjecturing, a diocesan Solemn High Mass is being celebrated for the first time in maybe  fifty , maybe a hundred years (who remembers just how long ago?) in this historic rural church.  No time to wax poetic, here are the pictures.  The weather here in northern California has been strangely warm and humid these past two weeks.  I love the sun, and I love yellow!  I made these summer altar arrangements with yellow lilies, sun flowers, weigela greens and blossoms- that were so gorgeous in the garden, I just couldn't resist!      Ad Dei Majorem Gloriam!

Altar flowers for the feast of Corpus Christi and arrangements made for the ordination anniversary reception for a wonderful priest, who has opened his parish to a community of traditional Catholics and to the Latin Mass.  Deo gratias! Gold and red roses, gold and red alstroemeria, white carnations and centranthus, golden scotch broom, magnolia and camellia greens.   For the side altars I had to improvise with some garden roses as I ran short of flowers!  There just happened to be four of these beautiful, butter yellow tea roses! For the ordination anniversary reception, I made twenty arrangements of hebe greens, lavender, rosemary, and purple rhododendrons for the tables. "Greening in" first works splendidly for floppy, unruly flowers like old fashioned roses and rhododendrons. Almost ready for transport! I will post photos of the altar when we celebrate the external Solemnity of Corpus Christi this Sunday.  As in Toledo, Spain, rosemary and rose petals will be...

Royal lilies, alstroemeria, and boxwood. I have spent the Easter Octave rejoicing and recovering from the most intense Triduum experienced to date.  It was glorious.  We are eternally grateful to the visiting priest who drove twenty hours of windy coastal roads, wrote four extensive liturgy plans (for Palm Sunday through Easter Vigil), coached us, bought us a fancy Vigil firepit at Costco and brought with him everything from a crotalus and vestments,  to a portable altar with custom-made antependium.  All so this small TLM community could celebrate the Sacred Triduum! We are blessed to have such a dedicated priest.   It was twenty-six Easter Vigils ago, at a Catholic College in the rusty steel belt, that I was immersed in a baby pool of water, anointed, given the name Gemma Jacinta, and received Our Lord for the first time.  Yes, it's been an adventure since I stepped out of the plastic kiddie pool.  This Triduum, my first in the Traditional Lati...

Arrangements for the altar of repose on Holy Thursday. Daffodils, white tulips, jasmine, passion flower greens, hebe and dusty miller.  Thank you  Fleur de Marie-Jacqueline  for the inspiration! *A cautionary tale about daffodils.  I bought them on Holy Wednesday looking gorgeous.  By Holy Thursday morning the petals were beginning to turn slightly papery and brown, and by the time I arranged them and transported them a half hour in the car...not so great.  Buy them the day of the Mass, if possible!  The ones that were partially closed when I bought them on Wednesday, oddly, didn't look so great either.   Thanks be to God, from a short distance they looked very pretty.   This was also my opportunity to use passion flower vine which I tucked in at the base of the arrangements.  I discovered the beautiful symbolism of this vine only a few years ago.  Find more on that  here. Some two years ago or so, our good curé asked...