I spent Sunday and Monday in a remote mountain community near the home of a close family friend who recently passed away. Traditional florist flowers didn't seem appropriate for the surrounding rugged alpine landscape and the man who loved it, so the family requested I design something with more of a wild feel. I brought along garden-grown hydrangeas and privets, supplemented them with market-purchased bachelor's buttons, eryngium, and freesia, then incorporated local pine, oak, wild sweet pea, and lupines (gathered from private property).
I was able to design the flowers for the family's home (above) in the motel room, but had to check out before it was time to put together the flowers for the burial ceremony. To escape the hot, dry heat of midday, I found a stoney stream bed under the deep shade of a cement bridge. The flowers could be kept cool in the icy water (below left), and I worked surrounded by the peaceful sound of the rushing stream and the view of the billowing thunderheads (below right). It seemed very appropriate.
Very moving.
ReplyDeleteHow beautiful is the space and these flowers. The colors, the composition, the stream.
ReplyDeleteI have done funeral flowers in basements, backyards and on a deck surrounded by people preparing food and laughing and crying.
But yours is such a lovely space to honor a life.
i've devoured every image up to this post so far and then i finally stopped to read...so touching and such beautiful, beautiful work. Thanks so very much for sharing, i'm sure the family loved what you did
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