I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia; the Deep South. Celebrating Easter has some traditions. There is usually an arrangement of flowers centered around Spring featuring pastel colors and bulbs, maybe some forced branches from Cherry trees if Easter is early.

The traditional Easter fare is a ham criss crossed with a knife, canned pineapple rings centered in the squares, cloves inserted (and sometimes a maraschino cherry) the entire ham is then doused in brown sugar and baked. The women are madly working in the kitchen while the men are outside having a Bourbon and Branch.

Bourbon and Branch is a cocktail, branch is water from the pure running creek in the backyard.

I have eschewed the ham tradition and the bourbon tradition. This leaves me looking for some other kind of branches as the creeks I would drink water from are few and far between. What is currently blooming in my garden is mostly orange, not what I had in mind for an Easter arrangement.

The Hong Kong Orchid tree has been flowering for a couple of weeks, a nice lavendar color and has a gnarled branch look about it. I decided to try one of those large branch arrangements that appear effortless. Ha, the branches are twisty and uncooperative and have to be pruned into submission. Then I decided to add a Palm frond, it is Easter, just a bit late for the palm part. The frond overwhelms everything so I cut it down to a smaller size and add some russet Bromeliad foliage to pick up the darker color in the Orchid flowers.

Here is the result, I thought this was a bit weird, but I like it. I left the pods and some browning foliage on Orchid tree branches and crushed the ends a bit to see if they would last longer that way. A semi traditional Easter arrangement, as I have the branch part covered, maybe I should try to find the bourbon.