Everybody loves receiving a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers (yes, even some men I know!). There’s  just something so uplifting and joyous in receiving such a gift of nature.

White dahlias and star-gazer lilies in my mother’s vase

And as I’ve said before, I love to arrange flowers, then my husband works his magic in his photography studio. He shoots the blossoms on a raised platform and  in front of a black-velvet backdrop.

This arrangement from earlier this autumn is especially significant because the vase was part of my mother’s family, passed down to her, then to me. The vase had a partner and the pair sat on either side of the mantelpiece in my mother’s childhood home. Later the duo graced the bookshelves in the den in our family home.

I was sorry when one of the vases arrived broken at our home in Seattle. Poorly packed, it didn’t survive the rough journey from suburban Philadelphia where I grew up.

But I’ve proudly displayed the survivor since 1996. It means so much to combine my love of flower arranging with an object that my mother, and I both love.