Holiday Bash!

Happy Holidays from Martha's. Here is some ambiance from our Open House and concert. We had the Orange Mighty Trio playing their music, and the shop was open for browsing, wreath-buying, refreshments and socializing.





above: Assorted wares. Amazing and cute ribbons available for purchase.



above: Nick Gaudette and Martha discuss wreathes.





above: Our front window looking magical. This picture looks fake, but it is not.





The cheese stands alone, it seems. We also had very good cupcakes from a new bakery in town.

Holiday Concert and Holiday Hours

The Orange Mighty Trio concert in our studio is Dec 5th! Our holiday hours are also below. Click to enlarge.

The Orange Mighty Trio plays virtuosic fiddle-influenced chamber music, which they sometimes call "bluegrassical." The City Pages recently reviewed their new album, which is titled Infrastructure, writing, "If you give it the attention it merits, it will reward you richly." Martha hosted the OMT for a holiday bash last year, and a good time it was.

Recent Work

A beautiful recent creation of Martha's.

Beautiful, artistic things we thought you'd like

1. Van Gogh has been online a lot recently. See sketches and corresponding letters on BibliOdyssey blog. http://tinyurl.com/gosketch

2. Cheer up with Mutt's Comics' Patrick McDonnell reading his adorable, heartwarming book Hug Time. http://tinyurl.com/hugtime (via Drawn!)

3. They gathered some nice Farmer's Market arrangements on Design Sponge, including a carrot as vase. http://tinyurl.com/farm-arr

4. Dwell Magazine has created a user-nominated map of small organic-type farms in the US. This fit with our green leanings. http://tinyurl.com/farmsmap

5. Abandoned newspaper boxes on the street. Planted with flowers by street artist. http://tinyurl.com/plantbox (jumps to Urban Prankster post)

Cajun-Themed Wedding

Cajun barbeque wedding! Red tablecloths, pepper lights, red paper lanterns for accent. The couple married on a mountaintop, and are celebrating in St Paul.

We're working on another Fall wedding with plums, persimmons, figs and so forth. Lots of rich textures in every piece.

Music and Flowers and Artaria Quartet

Thanks to the Artaria String Quartet and attendees of our flower shop concert! The next music event is the Orange Mighty Trio at our Holiday Open House on December 5th.

Martha at Work: Shop News

Latest news...

Did a beautiful wedding in Minneapolis with 34 rose arrangements of Freedom, Black Magic and Black Bacarra roses...large spheres of floral on clear glass, wild plums floating, amber light filtering through. Black Magic is one of our favorite roses!

Another great wedding in St. Paul had a Fall motive, with bittersweet galore. Romance with capitol R. Large English Garden roses and the Black Magic roses, again. Very cool couple and her dress was one of the most beautiful ever. Must check out the designer! More Oct weddings approach! We're building a beautiful Chuppa for one of them.

BTW, Thursday's concert by Artaria Quartet in our shop went really well. Fabulous music! Artaria Quartet played Mendelssohn etc and seemed to really enjoy doing it, too.

Love,

Martha and the Web Team

What they will be playing.

The Artaria says, "We are playing selections from the Haydn Op.76 no. 5 'Largo' quartet, the Mendelssohn Four pieces for String Quartet and Shostakovich 3rd quartet."

Click here, to listen to some recordings they've done of some other Haydn and Shostakovich!

See you on the 8th!

Martha and Co.

October 8. Artaria String Quartet. Concert in our Shop.

Greetings from Martha's Gardens,

We wanted to tell you about the concert in our shop on Thursday, October 8th! St. Paul's Artaria String Quartet is our guest for a night of chamber music. This performance will almost serve as a warm up for their appearance on Prairie Home Companion on Oct 17!



-Arrive at 6 pm for wine and socializing, and browse the shop.

-The music begins at 7 pm.

-Admission is free. Freewill donations will be accepted.

-Map to our shop, at 2484 University Ave W in St. Paul.

Look for more concerts in the future from Martha's Concert Series. Music and flowers go together!

We hope to see you there.

Sincerely,

Martha and Co.

Flowers in the Digital Age

We have launched a campaign to connect in new ways with you, our friends, to share something of us, interact, be digital friends, and hopefully have some fun in the process.

Our news stream on Twitter will feature shop news, and links. This blog will contain more in-depth thoughts on the same links and on other topics. We'll also post the events we host-- Open Houses and the Martha's Concert Series. Facebook will also keep you updated if you want to become a Fan on our Facebook Page, but messages there will be less frequently than Twitter. (We are not posting the same things on each.) Twitter seems to lend itself to rapid fire, while we'll reserve Facebook for occasional news updates.

As we "tweeted" already, we'd like to use these tools in a thoughtful way, to promote connection, to share and interact, to provide a digital bouquet of content, if that's not going too far with the metaphor.

Sincerely,

Martha and Co.