This week I have scouted out a few places along the stretch of beach here on the bay outside our artist’s “retreat” to use to make my daily arrangements. It’s a chance to get outside the studio and use things not normally available to me, and with each day I am finding more and more free materials provided by Mother Nature herself. Today I made the arrangement inside a piece of root/driftwood that is embedded on the beach. I found lots of bittersweet, still green, to use and thought it would be nice to intertwine it and make some use of the beautiful curved lines, and then I added the wild sweet peas from yesterday. Swirls of typha leaves added more curved lines in the the mass of bittersweet and sweet peas to complete the arrangement. It’s still there on the beach to be enjoyed if someone walks by and sees it. At first I worried a bit about it lasting and then started to realize that ikebana is made for the moment, for now, not yesterday or tomorrow. It’s a temporary thing that later on only resides in photos and in memory. Much like life itself.