January 09th, 2020

Kind of a strange combo eh?   A Christmasy flower arrangements and an old wooden bowl. However could they possibly be connected?  Well this story is kind of two stories but they are come together in the end,  I promise.

I'll start with the flowers.

Tim buys me flowers. What a sweetie that man is!  Usually it's cut flowers they I get to play with and group them together in pretty ways in my own vases. But every once in awhile, it's a per-made arrangement.  For Christmas this year I actually got two arrangements that were similar but different.  Which is kind of how I like things.  I like when things "go-together" as opposed to match.  See?

Various carnations, roses and chrysanthemums, a little greenery, some berries, some pine cones and there you go. Done.  One has a candle and is in a silver bowl. The other has no candle and is in a green ceramic container.  I adored them both.  The fragrance was divine.  A bonus is that Mums and carnations last a long time too so these flower arrangements looked mighty fine for about three weeks!  Not bad!

Now moving on to the wooden bowl.  Well originally it was my Nana's.  It was a chopping bowl.  There was a wooden handled, curved knife that was shaped exactly to the curve of the bowl.  The idea was that you cut (whatever you were cutting) as you rocked the knife back and forth. Clever.  I have no idea where the knife part went. Long gone. I actually never had possession of the knife. Which now that I think about it is probably a good thing considering my tendency to accidentally injure myself.

Somewhere along the line, Nana gave the bowl to me. I love the history of it, the simplicity and even the dings, marks and stains. A reminder of the little bowl:

Usually it sits on the kitchen counter top and is filled with various fruits or vegetables that prefer to not be refrigerated.  Usually it was just the right size for a weeks worth of fresh produce. Yummy!  If for some reason I had more produce than room in the bowl then I would have to bring out a big old serving bowl to use instead but it didn't happen very often.

It worked beautifully most of the time.  But I had noticed that no matter how green the bananas were when I bought them, they were over ripe and had to be baked into Banana muffins within a day or two. They were ripening too quickly and I wondered why.  But I happened across an article explaining why bananas last longer when hung up rather than laying down (say in a cute little wooden bowl)  Dang.  It's my fault!  I hate when that happens.

I was in the car with Tim when I found the article and read it aloud to him.  Poor man is a captive audience in the car with me and often finds himself on the listening end of many articles that he probably isn't all that interested in.

But he does like bananas so he bought me a new produce holder.  This one has a hook for bananas and a bowl for whatever else we want to put in there!  How awesome is that?

The bananas are hung by the chimney with care...no wait, that's not right.  But they are hung up and looking darned good there.  And the bowl is much larger so right now it's holding apples, nectarines and a loaf of lovely artisan bread with room to spare. 

I really do love my new produce bowl and I know it will serve us well for many  many years to come!  Hurrah!

​But what about my cute little wooden bowl?  What do I do with it now?  I walked it around the house trying to just set it out here or there. But it never looked quite right.

It ended up on the kitchen table.  Mostly because I had nothing else sitting on the kitchen table and it was looking kind of naked.  But the small, humble wooden bowl on it's own was a little too minimalist for me.  It needed something more. Hmmmm.

I considered filling it with shells. Shells are easy. I know where they keep 'em and it's only a 10 minute walk away.  Free for the taking.  Beaches are nice that way.  And our beach has LOADS of them!

Experimentally I put a few shells in the bowl but I didn't really like how it looked.  I considered filling it with interesting rocks. Oddly I have some of those too. But that wasn't the right look either.  Kind of heavy and clunky (as rocks tend to be).  I have some beach glass but it's already in apothecary jars and looks great there.  

Well the bowl just sat on the table empty, looking very small and insignificant and a little sad.
Awww poor little bowl.

 At some point during the day,  I also noticed that the flower arrangements were also looking rather sad.  The flowers were drooping and fading and the petals falling off. Their time had come and gone.  So I started to throw away the entire arrangement and suddenly it occurred to me that, while the posies were past their prime, the pine cones still looked pristine.

 Interesting. Maybe the pine cones  would look good in the little wooden bowl?  Hmmmm.  Well there is only one way to find out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained right?

So I threw out the dead/dying flowers but kept the pine cones. Which of course had been glued onto sticks for the arrangements.  I tried pulling the sticks off. Nope.  I tried breaking the sticks off, Also no.  Dang!  What kind of glue do they use?  Do they weld them on?

So I walked around thinking about it for a bit while I did other things. I knew that I didn't want to ruin my scissors and honestly there was no guarantee that a regular scissor would work anyway.  And then it hit me.  

Pruning shears!  Taadaa!  Worked like a champ!  Hurrah!

Quickly and carefully I chopped the pinecones off the various sticks (some wooden, some plastic covered wire) and experimentally put them in the bowl.  Ok. Better. But not quite enough yet.  I found some additional pine cones and now voila!  The little wooden bowl looks perfect ;)

I suppose in the spring I can think of something else to put in the bowl.   And then change it out again in another season. Why not?  I will find ways to fill the little wooden bowl throughout the year, every year!  It looks so very nice. Even better than when it was filled with fruits and veggies.  Perhaps this was it's intended destiny?

So there you have it. A coming together of two completely different, unrelated things in a perfect way.

Life has the most beautiful way of surprising us ;)