December 7, 2011--December daisies

What I had wanted to say about yesterday's arrangement (below) is that it included a tiny spring of nandina berries leftover from a big arrangement as well as a couple of stems of  a native grass with fluffy, white seed heads  (l;ittle blue stem). I dropped them into a partially-used spool of ribbon, also leftover from the larger arrangement.  So very easy and pretty dramatic. 

But what happens when you introduce red to the windowsill is that every subtler thing is visually overpowered.  I experience this every Christmas when I start decorating and introduce the first red ribbon. Game over: red wins. Today I had intended to just go with it--to play with nandina berries all over the place, but on my morning walk I encountered something not red that deserved a  place on the windowsill--several oxeye daisies. It's not all that unusual to find a few of them blooming in December (I remember journaling about the first I ever encountered, thinking I'd never see such a thing again), but they do usually bloom in early summer, so these late, late, late bloomers are worth noting. Anyway, I picked two and put them in a little bottle on the windowsill. They don't show up very well in photo below (partly because of the window mullions), but they do prove one thing: that white, particularly when it's out of season,  can compete with red.