Small Ways | A Few Stems

For all my minimalist tendencies, I do get carried away when it comes to fresh flowers in the house in summer. By golden morning light, I’m in the wildflower market, foraging basket in hand, and soon it’s filled to overflowing, an abundance of nature’s beauty. But I do not stop there. No, I keep right on snipping and gathering as if I didn’t have enough, laying the extra handfuls of precious blooms across any available seat in my car for the quick drive home. Twice this summer already, I’ve picked up friends for a jaunt and had to apologize as I hastily swept away flower litter from the passenger seat, evidence of my profound floral habit. (Should you ever ride with me in summer, there won’t be trash in my car, but I can’t promise there won’t be petals and leaves.)

Back home, I lug my haul by armloads to the worktable. I give the stem ends a fresh snip and sink them into buckets and jars of fresh water for a good drink while I prepare one of my biggest vases. Then, it’s a floral designing free-for-all. When I’m finished, what I’ve created usually lands somewhere between large and enormous. Incredible, lush, floral enormity. Far, far too big for our house, in logical terms, but I flatly ignore this notion and place it on the dining table anyway. To give you an idea of scale, at mealtimes, it’s typical to be able to hear my husband at the other end of the table, but not see him. But! Good thing I’ve never been bound by logic, because I have no plans to change my frivolous flower ways. Priorities! (We’ll see each other after the meal. Grin.)

However…

There’s something about the simplicity of a single vase holding just a few stems. One or two, but no more than three, all of the same kind and color. No filler, no greens. Just flowers. It’s like a slow, deep exhale. And so doable for all of us. Just step out your door with snips in hand and take the first three blooms you see. (Not from your neighbor’s garden without permission, of course, but roadsides, public lands, and your own yard and garden are good places to look.) Walk back inside, fill a small, narrow-necked vase with water, snip the stem ends one more time, and put them in. You don’t even have to know what you’re doing for this to turn out well. If you want a little bit of direction, cut each stem at a different length, with the tallest no higher than double the height of the vase, and the shortest just above the rim. Flowers have a natural way they want to lean, so let each one lean how it wants, and there you go. 

Now you have a small bundle of beauty to tuck into a corner of your home. This is the sweet thing about this: it can go where others can’t (ahem). You might put one on a bookcase or open shelf, no matter the room (mudroom, laundry, hallway), in the bathroom (I love flowers in the bathroom), on a windowsill in your kitchen (or another windowsill in the house that you’d never expect to see flowers on), on your nightstand (I currently have a single stem in an antique perfume bottle on mine), or, if you actually want to see the person you’re dining with, you could even place it in the center of the dining table. 

P.S. Truth be told, I’ve learned to move the large floral bouquets over to the end table in the living room during meal time, because boys and men don’t tend to appreciate the experience of eating and talking around a giant flowery bush.

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Simple. Reachable. Doable. Small ways. They pack enough punch to change your world, or your day. Or maybe, simply and gloriously, they’ll change your moment. Small Ways is a series about small objects, small gestures, small touches. Small ways for living well.

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