today's gifts from the garden

This box of goodies started with the huge, green coxcomb flower, which broke off in my hand while I was trying to tease some seeds from it. I groaned, but saved the flower hoping to use it somehow on the windowsill. The tatume squash also came from today's harvest, and I found the white hydrangea flower (top right) on the ground  as I walked back from the shed. Because the coxcomb stem was so short, I knew there was no way to use it in a vase, so I laid it into this box. Then came the squash, the hydrangea flower, and finally the orange Japanese lantern pods, which had been sitting around the utility room since last year. They're faded and not as pretty as those from this year's , but they worked in this box and I didn't mind snipping them off their stems as much as I would have the fresher ones.