Bud Vases

Even as a frugal young bride I bought daffodils in the spring to brighten up my apartment.  Flowers placed in vases brought in the sunshine of the outdoors, sometimes the scent.

Through the years, I have collected vases and have developed some strong opinions what makes a good holder of flowers.  Size, design, height, color all service a purpose of adding or detracting from the main event of the freshly cut flowers.

During my middle years I would travel the side roads and cut from the fields, ditches or abandoned houses or properties.  A famous family story is the time a man pointed a shot gun at me and told me to drop the flowers I was taking from what I thought was an empty house.  It was scary and the rest of the summer I picked only from the ditches and open fields.

On my last move, I sold off many of my vases.  I pictured in my mind the great evenings those vases held large bouquets for gatherings.  Flowers were always the first time I arranged before starting the setting of the table or cooking the food.  My flowers were the calming form of preparing for a party. No two bouquets were the same because they were made of what was available. 

I tell myself I don't grow flowers at all anymore but it is not true.  In my yard, I have roses, lilies, iris and some gladiolus, the last  as an after thought in the corner, they were hand offs of someone.  Each year I manage to plant to seeds for narcissus.  I  love how they trail over the edge of my vegetable beds.

Late in the afternoon yesterday, I cut some of the climbing roses from my arbor and put them in two small vases I bought back from China over 25 years ago.  These little green cloisonnes vases bring back memories of that trip but also symbolize how my world has changed.  I look at the smallest of these vases and think about the size of my world now, not much bigger than this yard and these tiny containers.