Beautiful Gift from a Beautiful Lady

On Monday, I was blatantly coveting my friend Nita's fall arrangement pictured on Facebook. "Make me one," I said, jokingly. To which she instead supplied her recipe:

Fill one container with sand. Put a bunch of red willow standing straight up in the middle. Tie it around the top with a thingy like a ribbon or something. surround that with rose branches. Bandage your hands and arms. Put a bunch of pine branches around that, more horizontally. sprinkle branches with red berries of some sort. If you want, add a diagonal line of another straightish thing like grass. Add some water. Do not bake. Freeze.

While I appreciate the detailed instructions, they were no more helpful than if Nita's talented son Colson were to tell me it was easy to play a fiddle by "simply drawing the bow across the strings like this;" or her daughter Kyla said "you can draw this picture, too, all you have to do is this and this;" or if her husband Stan told me I, too, could take great photos just by doing thus and such. Right.

(This is the artsiest family in the history of the world. They think it's normal.)

ANYWAY... so that evening, I'm handing out Halloween treats at my front door and on one such trip, what should appear on my step but a gorgeous Fall arrangement suspiciously like Nita's. She was no where to be seen, however.

I dashed off to play rehearsal and found her there. Turns out she hauled all the stuff to town and assembled the arrangement IN MY NEIGHBOUR'S DRIVEWAY! In the dark. Then recruited some passers-by to help her drag the lovely thing over to my place. No tricks. Just a big treat.

Thank you, my friend. I love it.