The bouquet is pretty enough. Deep pink blooms, a delicate fragrance, and dark green leaves comprise the vase of roses I picked up for Andy. The photograph came out decent enough as well. So why don’t I like it? It’s a pet peeve of mine: store-bought flowers, as pretty as they photograph, carry less weight and beauty for me than something that came out of my own backyard. It’s easy to stop by Fresh Market or Trader Joe’s and pick up the materials for a proper bouquet. It’s simple to artfully arrange them in a vase and coax them into full bloom. And it’s a breeze to wait for the morning light to dapple in through the curtains and give the flowers the necessary illumination to present well, but somehow it all rings hollow.
Give me a looser, wilder, rougher collection of blooms any time. Give me shorter stems and home-made filler (Miscanthus works surprisingly well). There’s something about those flowers – more prized for their less-than-abundant number, more meaningful for knowing all the hard work that went into them – that speaks directly to my heart. They’re not as bright, or big, as the store-bought ones, but I value them because of it. They will always be more beautiful that way.
Back to Blog
