Decorating with Grasses

Problem I guess you could say the problem in this situation is that I saw some great different types of grass outside while working in the garden and I thought they would look great inside, but I had to figure out how to display them.

Requirements The method could not cost anything and since I really didn't have a lot of time, had to take less than an hour, but preferably less than a half hour. It had to look pretty.

Research I think the only research that I can claim to have done in this case was watch far too many period movies in which they are decorating their house with things like this. I also have been given a grand total of about 4 hours of instruction as regards floral arrangements--about 2 1/2 hours from a florist for a school thing in 8th grade and about 1 1/2 from an interior designer when I was about 17. 

Solution Since I didn't want to spend a lot of time, I eliminated any sort of weaving, gluing or sewing and was pretty much left with cutting and arranging the grasses in an old pasta sauce jar.

Prototype I cut three types of grass: a very droopy kind that my sister-in-law said was cheat grass, something that looks like wheat, and what my sister-in-law told me was Kentucky blue grass (my sister-in-law is majoring in this stuff). I kept the types of grass separate and took them all inside. I then took a pasta jar, cleaned the sticky part left from the label off with furniture polish (pure lemon oil works really well for removing sticky from tape or labels, but any furniture polish will do it some. That was a really useful take away from my days as a custodian), and arranged.

I decided to put some water in the jar to see if it would make them stay green longer as per my husband's suggestion. I don't really think it worked, but it didn't seem to really hurt either

Test and Redesign I would consider this a success. Though the grass has halfway turned yellow now, I like the look. On the downside, this would be a bad centerpiece if any one in my family had pollen allergies. About 24 hours after I did this, I noticed a lot of pollen around the base of my arrangement. I actually think I like it more now several days later (picture to the right).