r
Nora Mueller

Bouquet of the Week: A Novel Idea

As part of our recurring Bouquet of the Week series, Garden Collage continues to present a weekly inspirational bouquet that incorporates intriguing new elements into the traditional practice of flower arranging. This week, Garden Collage styles a bouquet in honor of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There.

The last time I attempted National Novel Writing Month, I was in the seventh grade. I can’t recall the specifics of my story and I suspect that is for the best. I am sure it exists somewhere, saved on a floppy disk with a carefully printed label or scrawled in the pages of a mostly empty composition notebook, waiting to be rediscovered and cringed over.

- Advertisements -

Garden CollageNora Mueller

National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, takes place in November and invites aspiring authors to complete 50,000 words (about the length of a novel) over the course of thirty days. This equals out to about 1,700 words a day, which always seems reasonable mid-October but becomes impossibly long the moment November begins. I told myself this year I would finally accomplish what my twelve year old self could not.

I am currently hovering at around 500 words.

Garden CollageNora Mueller

Flowers, of course, are a popular source of inspiration for writers. For my Bouquet of the Week, I decided to design an arrangement that might galvanize me to–if not catch up–at least make a ritual of adding a little bit on each day. For inspiration, I drew on a text I have always found entertaining and which quite literally brings flowers to life: Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There.

In Chapter 2 of Through the Looking Glass, Alice happens upon a field of flowers and laments, “O Tiger-lily…I wish you could talk,” only to be startled by the Tiger-lily curtly replying, “We can talk…when there’s anybody worth talking to.”

The tiger lily seemed appropriately autumnal in hue, and I selected complementary flowers that similarly evoked the colors of fall. I maintained a very vivid palette with different textures, leaving me with a slightly eccentric bouquet, appropriate for the absurdity of Carroll’s tale.

Garden CollageNora Mueller

- Advertisements -
Related Articles