December 1, 2011

This was so easy to create, so impossible to photograph. Here's how it evolved: In the barn, where I was emptying a shop that held vases and arranging materials, I came across this little square, red, cube-shaped vase. I don't care how much you want to avoid "the Christmas-merchandising machine" in December, you do get pulled into it. Or maybe there's a pull deeper than the one associated with merchandising?  Maybe, after November begins to brown, red is a magnet no matter what your aversion to "the Christmas machine"? For whatever reason, I was drawn to this red vase. And while in the barn I came across these stems of a native grass (little blue stem) I'd dried last year. I stuck them upright in the red cube and filled in around the rim with American holly. So very easy, and quite pretty, especially when the light hit the luminescent little blue stem seed heads. But photographing it...... impossible! It was fun to watch the light reveal shadows of the window mullions on the curtains, but to get the vase to read red and the seed structures to read white at the same time, I found impossible. Here's my best shot. (It actually looks better at night, as I'm writing this, but I don't have the energy to re-photograph it.)