Thinking big

Around our house, we do a lot of putting things in vases. These collections are never remarkably beautiful, elegant or grand but I do like a bit of outside inside. I have done since I was a child and many of my clearest memories are built around flowers: the tiny seaside daisies from my Grammy's house in Toowoomba; camelias and petunias in the houseswap house in Melbourne; the stretches of jonquils by an old oval when we lived in Hamilton; the the startingly bright marigolds from our time on the property outside that same town; azaleas in the house in Brisbane where my parents still live. Well, let's just say I've never met a flower I didn't like and didn't want to pick and bring inside to look at. Even now as I type in the office there's a big bunch of purloined sky blue and lavendar hydrangas sitting on my desk.

So it's been lovely to see Lu has started 'arranging'. We pick bits and pieces, I fill a vase with water and then she squats and thoughtfully places each stem, one by one. But whereas I put flowers in a vase Lu has bigger aims:

Kris: Those flowers look so beautiful, darling.
Lu: These are not flowlows, Mummy. I am putting trees into a forest. I am making a forest.

Heaven knows, we need a bit more of that down this way. I like the way this kid thinks.