The height of midsummer is also the season during which flowering plants bloom most profusely. It is my own conviction that - having first pinched or snipped off superfluous leaves and blooms, and having finally bedewed one's arrangement with a liberal use of an atomizer filled with pure water - to offer a richly liberal variety of flowers may afford a most pleasing effect.

　　On this occasion I have used a boat-shaped receptacle cast in Chinese-style bronze, and have made the center of my arrangement the bellflower, taking into consideration how the colors of the other blooms might give balance to both the pale violet of the bellflower and also one another's hues. Placing the boat on a slight diagonal to the viewer suggests that it is a-move upon a current of water.

　　Should one manage to arrange the Themeda triandra so as to suggest that it is being bent by a passing breeze, an arrangement such as this may offer one's guests a greater sense of coolness. And, recently, I have found that lychnis is extremely effective in giving such an arrangement an appearance of springing from a unified base-point.

　　An arrangement of this kind must rely upon the use of what is sometimes, in English, called a 'frog' - that is to say, a small bed of closely-packed nails. As one does not wish to confront one's guests with the sight of this rather cruel-looking implement, it is advisable to conceal it beneath larger leaves, or multicolored pebbles.