CHAPTER XIV

PHLOX

Phlox Tower and Phlox Design

IN a great bunch of garden-flowers given me by a friend I found some pink-and-white phlox (Fig. 87), and from it I made first a

Phlox Tower

As you know, the blossom is trumpet-shaped and flares at the open end into five petals. The tube part is long and narrows to a point, so it is easy to push one flower into another. That is what you do in building the phlox tower. You pull the blossom off its stem and out of the little green calyx which holds it, then you push the end of the tube part into the round red eye in the centre of another flower as far down as it will go. Then you push another blossom into that one and build up until your tower is as high as you want it, or as high as it will stand without toppling over. A bud stuck in the top flower makes a good finish (Fig. 88).

Phlox Design

The design Fig. 89 was made by first putting three blossoms together, sticking one inside the other as for the tower, to form the long side sprays, and afterward arranging three blossoms below the side sprays and one above with their stems meeting at the middle, as they are in Fig. 89. On each side of the upper flower was placed a sprig of buds; then the tube part of a blossom was cut off and the petal part fitted in the centre of the design to cover the ends of the other flowers where they met.

The tube parts of three more flowers were cut away, and the petal parts arranged in the position shown in Fig. 89. This formed a scattered design quite different from any of the others made of flowers.

Touches of paste on the under part held all the flowers in place. The phlox design is a good one to preserve by pressing.

The Tiger-Lily Leopard

From the brilliant-orange tiger-lily, with its dark-brown or black spots, we are going to make a--tiger? No, a leopard. Tiger-lilies may have spots, but tigers, you know, are striped.

It is really wonderful how much this little animal, made of parts of a beautiful flower and broom-straws, looks like the stealthy, prowling, wild creature which lives in Africa and Asia. The yellow coat of the live leopard is covered with black spots, and so is that of our flower leopard. The fierce living animal has a long tail that it moves slowly back and forth in anger or when it threatens to attack another animal or a man. Our little leopard also has a long tail which, if it does not really move, looks as if it were just going to. But while the live animal is ferocious and will kill, we can only pretend that of the tiger-lily leopard. Though he looks dangerous, he cannot even nibble a green leaf.

The illustration of the tiger-lily given here is a drawing of the one from which the lily leopard (Fig. 90) was made. You will notice that at the right of the flower (Fig. 91) there is the stem and pistil of a blossom that has fallen apart.

When we make the leopard we cut off this lily-stem close to the stalk, leaving the pistil attached, to use for the back-bone and tail. Four broom-straws, about an inch and a half long and sharpened at one end, we use for legs. The pointed ends of two of the legs are pushed into the stem at the front, and the other two in part of the pistil at the back, as shown in Fig. 92. That makes the skeleton.

Now we have to fit on the skeleton the leopard's spotted coat. After pulling the perfect flower apart we select the petal best suited for this purpose (Fig. 93), and then take the curl partially out of it by pressing it down on the table with our fingers. The tip of the petal will have to be cut off because it comes down too far over the tail.

The blunt end of the petal will be the leopard's head, and it can be rounded up and moulded with your fingers until it looks like the head of the leopard in Fig. 90. Small ears of bits of broom-straw, pointed at one end, we must stick in the head where they belong and then, in order to make the coat stay in place, we will pin it to the skeleton at the neck, in the middle of the back, and again at the tail, with fine broom-straws. So we have the little leopard complete.