Harvest Moon

Last week, my floral design classes started up again after a 2 month break for the summer. I was glad to get back into the swing of things. As my instructor and I reviewed what I had and didn't have in my beginner's certification portfolio (I had 24 arrangements and I need 30), it became obvious that two key arrangement types had been left out of our instructional packets--the "Crescent" and the "Hogarth Curve". And since vase and basket arrangements are the bulk of the demand at a florist, my instructor indicated I should do two more of each of those two.

So when I went to buy flowers for today's class, I had my mind set on doing a vase arrangement with a mixed bouquet of whatever looked good. But then when I got to the grocery store, they had these cool looking branches called "pumpkin tree" with little baby "pumpkins" dangling from them (I think they're a variety of pepper). That got my imagination churning and before I knew it I had come up with the idea of using a carved out pumpkin for the container instead of a vase.

Once I got to class, I asked my instructor what arrangement she would like to see me create to round out my portfolio. She suggested that I challenge myself and do a "Crescent" or "Hogarth Curve" with the pumpkin as the base. Well, I knew I had to do a crescent shape with all the autumnal flowers. It would look like a "harvest moon"! So that's what I did and I'm so glad I did--even though it did take me over 3 hours to complete it.