January 17, 2012 -- spirea

I wish I had started taking pictures of these spirea twigs when I first cut them, in mid-December. I cut them then to use in a regular arrangement, and, at that time, they had tiny, linear golden leaves on them. The leaves started falling off after Christmas, then tiny white flowers bloomed on the naked twigs. You can still see the remnants of some of those flowers lining the twigs. But it's these twigs' third act that I'm enjoying now. They have started to put out new, fresh green leaves and are just as pretty as they can be.