'Foraging for Beauty'

You go out in the morning with a basket, or your hands cupped, or both pockets full. You are not looking for anything specific. You are looking for everything that stops you. Privet in its white clusters, smelling of something almost too much. Cedar tips with their green precision. Celosia bright as a declaration. Baby’s breath between everything else, holding space. Cherry blossoms because they were there and it was their moment. Lily of the valley in its bells, nodding. Hemlock with its hollow stems and its family resemblance to things both deadly and beautiful. Spirea in its long arching sprays.

All of it went into the large brass oval — the most generous frame in the Maiden collection — because all of it deserved to be remembered. This is what a season looks like when you paid attention to it.

For the one who comes home with full hands and already knows what she’ll do with them.