Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms reading this. On Martha’s show Friday, she made an arrangement of lilacs using a bowl and a vase together (this is also in May Living, page 50). Our lilacs are just in bloom, so I decided to give this a try. Of course, it was complicated by several factors. First of all, I don’t have a pedestal bowl and a vase that matches it. I do not have floral tape. I am also not a very talented flower arranger. I tend to prefer to leave my flowers growing outside, where they last longer. If I do pick them, I tend to just stuff a few in a vase.

I used an actual snipper thing to cut them with instead of wrestling with scissors. I found a pink bowl and pink vase to use, but the bowl has no pedestal and the vase is not very tall, so it didn’t come out looking like Martha’s.

The best tip I picked up from Martha’s demo was that you are supposed to smash the ends of the flower stalk so it will last longer. I never knew that and in the past, my lilacs have never lasted more than a day or two. It will be interesting to see if they last longer this time.

I’m not really wild about my arrangement. It’s ok. I love the lilacs and will enjoy looking at them and smelling them though. While I was cutting them, I was thinking of my grandmother, who just passed away. I remember helping her cut them behind her house, and seeing her arrangement on her dining room table.