First Flowers

Today I made my first flower arrangement of the year.
This arrangement, I think, and all the context surrounding it, is a perfect indicator of what this business of mine is and what it is going to be... the epitome of making do with what is available, but not without making something beautiful of it.
Here in Minnesota it's just starting to warm up, so pussy willows and maple blossoms are literally the extent of what is available.

I pulled the materials from the swamp and the woods under a gray and thundering sky, just barely getting them into the attached garage as the first big raindrops of the first warm, steady rain of the year began to fall.
Various kinds of pussy willows in various stages of bloom/leaf (did you know there's more than one kind of pussy willow? There are here), as well as some leafy twigs of a honeysuckle shrub, some lilac branches, and some maple blossoms.

I arranged them on the two big freezers beside the car and when I was finished I was quite ecstatic... mostly from the rush of FINALLY getting to make flowers again after a long and dreary winter, but also because I then pronounced it the best arrangement I've ever made (definitely the biggest, regardless).
This is the first arrangement I've made after a whole winter of scrolling through thousands of photos in my florals-dedicated Instagram feed, reading up on countless blogs of the big names in the new floral movement, and generally absorbing everything I can about the way flowers are being arranged by creative dreamers nowadays.

When I wanted to take photos before darkness fell, my sister (the keeper of the camera) couldn't find the battery, so I had to use my phone.
My goal was to take photos in front of the barn, but it was raining far too hard for that, so I set up in a clean-ish corner of the three-stall garage. I found a log somewhere on which to put the vase, and the diffused rainlight was quite nice for this particular arrangement. The random half-rusted piping and exposed walls made it all quite shabby-chic, I realized, once I had everything set up.

So I learned another lesson with these first flowers... life, and home business especially, is what you make of it. Sometimes you have to move the air compressor out of the way of your photoshoot. Sometimes you're going to see the basketball hoop in photos. Often you will be trudging around in rubbers.

I didn't feel professional, but then I remembered that I'm not, because I'm 16 years old and taking photos of foraged flowers in my garage. But the cool thing is that I can do that, and you know what? I'm going to make something out of it. And, if I may, there's something really beautiful about that, I think.