My intentions for today were to do a totally different arrangement from the one you see. I have two new containers that I want to use and my plan was to use one for today. While on my walk to gather some materials for the arrangement I remembered a branch that Frederick had pointed out to me on a walk in the neighborhood earlier this week. It was a branch of oak with an interesting gall on it, so that shifted my thoughts just a bit and I went to locate it and bring it home. Oak galls, also called oak apples, are a common phenomenon produced by the oak trees’ reaction to wasps that lay their eggs inside of the oak bark. I wanted to go ahead and use one of the new containers and tried putting the gall branch in a kenzan and it soon became apparent that the gall was too heavy. So I chose a smaller vase with a small opening that I could use, and I thought the weight from the water would balance against the heavy oak gall. It worked great and I added a begonia leaf and a single purple lisianthus bloom. Doing a simpler arrangement always seems to be easy, and I admit sometimes I feel like I should be doing more, however once I start the arrangement I realize how difficult using only a few materials really is. It’s a challenge to make it look expressive, but so worth the time it takes to get a great result.