Original Painting, 18x18", "Seven David Austins"

18x18” mixed media acrylic, Stabilo pencil, and ink.

Please click on each image, to see the whole thing.

My daughter Sarah lives next door to me, and has a summer garden with thousands of blossoms every season. Both my daughters live in our culdesac, and have managed to architect beautiful lives and beautiful spaces in an unlikely neighborhood. (We lovingly call it “the hood”.). Sarah grows cosmos, sunflower, a gazillion dahlias, hydrangea, cottage roses, and then she has her beloved David Austins. She does it for love. She gives all that beauty away.

And while it is an equally beautiful thing to make a business out of a passion, right now, she has zero desire to commodify her flowers. It isn’t bad or wrong to create a business plan out of a passion, she sometimes sells dried arrangements and the occasional bouquet...but as a general rule, right now she just does not want to. And that is more than okay!

Her bouquets have brought so many in our church to tears, when they find them quietly sitting on their seat as they step inside the sanctuary. Sarah seems to know when you need one.

I’m never more blessed than when one of her expertly arranged bouquets lands on my front porch or dining table.

Who even am I?!