Happy Mother’s Day to all of you moms out there!!! The restaurants, malls, parks, etc. will probably be a nightmare today (particularly after the Pacquiao fight) so we will stay home, turn on an airconditioner in the smallest room in the house, and vegetate all day long… I braved the crowds at the Dangwa flower market last Friday morning at 630am to purchase some blooms, and while extremely well-stocked, I think the prices had risen to almost Valentine’s Day levels. After walking up and down the entire length of the market, I decided to go simple this Mother’s Day, and bought a mass of mini yellow calla lilies.
There was an abundance of these architectural, sculptural, rigid yet fluid blooms in beautiful hues of yellow so I picked out 20, then upped that to 30 and added on another 10. In the West, blooms like these roughly 12-18 inches in length, can run you $5-8 per stem. This bounty of 40 stems would cost you $200-320! Yipes! But at Dangwa, I managed to get them for just PHP25 per stem, without serious haggling. That is roughly $24 or about 1/10th the cost elsewhere on the planet. Back at home, I placed some stems in a medium sized heavy crystal vase, photo up top. With so many blooms left over, we made a second much shorter arrangement (I cut the stems back on purpose) in a baby version of the larger crystal vase.
And there was enough for another arrangement, with all of the longest blooms in the bunch, here photographed on a side table. Mrs. MM knows that I tend to get flowers off-cycle from major holidays like Valentine’s and Mother’s Day, but this year, she got all of these. :) Now let’s hope they stay happy in the sweltering, but I mean sweltering heat.
The day after, I decided to try the flowers in a different vase, because they seemed a bit pedestrian… A simple change in vase and massed to one side and they looked surprisingly new.
12 Responses
Love the last pic arrangement. They’re like hands reaching out to Mom.
Happy Mother’s Day to all Moms of the world.
yellow blooms are beautiful!! perfect for mother’s day! i just didn’t realize calla lilies are pricey because my brother in escondido california brings dozens whenever he visits us in the san fernando valley. happy mother’s day to all of us mothers, mothers at heart and caregivers.
I love the one sided arrangement! Happy Mother’s Day to Mrs. MM!
the colors are so refreshing and warm. Happy mother’s day!
Nice! Elegant simplicity! Happy Mama’s Day Mrs.MM!
Soo beautiful! Happy Mother’s Day to Mrs. MM!
Mother’s day is just one of the days my mom’s cooking come to mind. Every time my capricious pieces of heavy copper or stainless steel cooking vessels need polishing, I think of mother’s paltry pots and pans. A caserola here, a kawali there, a caldero for cooking rice and a cheap blue enameled tin pot for cooking paksew, a couple of sandok, a siyanse etc. With this battered and bent battrie de cuisine she magically whipped up marvelous meals and mouth watering desserts, her cooking leaning little on gear but mostly on imagination and love. Happy day to all of you moms out there.
How gorgeous are the vases. MM you are a talented & creative man. I never missed to read your blog everyday, it’s an escape for me from endless paper work.
Happy Mothers day to all !!!
love the last pic..you’re right, a change of vase and direction ups the “sosyal” factor.
thanks, MM..calla lilies are among my favorite flowers. am sure Mrs. MM had a wonderful Mother’s Day!
I like the last photo of flower arrangement the most.
Hello, Sir. The arrangements and photos are amazing. I just want to request permission for me to copy photos #2 and #4 for my personal use. I will use it as my desktop background if you will allow me, Sir. Thank you and God bless!