Flower Plaques

When I was five years old, I made these plaques, based on some I saw in my arts and crafts classes at summer camp. As I recall, I came home and hammered together my own versions using stuff I found in the garage and yard.

You gotta love how haphazard they are. The petals of the flowers are made from bits of pine cone, and the stems from sticks. I love the bent nails, the cracks and breaks, the sloppy paint job.

My mom was so impressed with them she took a picture of me:

(The red one in the photo is different from the one we have now. I must have made an extra one. Maybe I gave it away to my regular after-school babysitter, who was a surrogate grandmother to me.)

We hung them in my room, and when I got a few years older they were stored in a closet, and for the past few decades they've been hanging in a guest room. But the blooms are about to fade. My mom isn't keeping them when she moves, and neither am I. I just don't have the will or the space to schlep them back to England. The flowers are finally going back to nature!