I am a scavenger! My eyes are constantly searching as I drive down the road for unique branches, foliage’s, and flowers. This is how I learned to design. As a young housewife I did not have money to purchase flowers but I loved to arrange.  I would often search along the road for elements I could use in my pieces, we tagged this product “roadsideus.” I would add these clever and interesting finds to the lovely things that bloomed on my property. Each year I would delight in the many new things I would find either here, or along the roads that lead to my home. Several weeks ago at Easter I was asked to make a crown of thorns for the little church down the road.

I knew that I could find horrid and miserable thorns if I just hit the road.

So yesterday, I was working on a photo shoot and I have been noticing an amazing white bloom dangling from the trees along the road. I knew when I saw this flower that I had to have it for my shoot. On my way back from the daily preschool drop I pulled over to do some old time “roadsideus cutting.”  As I began to cut the amazing white cascading bloom I was rewarded with a scent that was beyond magical, perhaps the most wonderful thing I have ever smelled. I also was rewarded with a very large thorn. Much to my surprise and delight the horrid thorny branch had become an amazing fragrant flower. The flower is from a locust tree and in all my years of living here and designing I have never noticed or taken the time for this bloom and branch.

It was the thorny miserable locust, that made my designs so inspired, lovely, soft, and unique. Life is funny!!