Plunk your pretty petals in a summery pail

The lazy days of summer demand no-fuss bouquets.

With these fun and easy arrangements, you'll soon be back enjoying your favorite summer activities at home or on vacation. The bouquets work equally well inside the house or outside if you are entertaining on the porch or deck.

For an "outside" vase, grab something from around the house — an old-fashioned tin bucket or child's sand pail — and fill it with water and flowers plucked from your yard or purchased from a farmers market.

Few of us have the time or space to develop a "cutting garden," but most Pacific Northwest yards yield a colorful variety of summer perennials for arrangements. Daisies, day-lilies, hydrangeas, montbretia, delphiniums, irises, hostas, grasses, dahlias and roses are just a few of the flowers that are readily available now.

We added summer daisies, purple baby's breath and daylilies to a blue pail for a sunny beach look, and blue and purple hydrangeas to an old-fashioned tin pail for a breezy, cool feel.

General tips

Pails hold plenty of water, making them the perfect container for floral arrangements during hot summer days. By changing the water daily and trimming any foliage that falls below the waterline, the bouquets should stay fresh for several days.

If the mouth of the vase or pail is too wide to easily hold the arrangement upright, use a florist frog or foam soaked in preservative to hold the flowers. You could also insert a jar with a narrower mouth inside the bucket and place the flowers in it.

On vacation and can't find a frog to hold the flowers? Gather some seashells or small pebbles to secure the stems. Take the seashells home to use as flower holders in clear vases; they will remind you of summer on dark and dreary winter days.