Color Sweet Tooth

There is never enough room in our kitchen cabinets. Mostly they're too high, especially for dearest, who is just a little over five feet tall, and who points out frequently, in many houses, that cabinets are put up mostly by men but are used mostly by women. This means a third to half of the upper cabinets are out of reach for all but the tallest of us.

And then there is the fact that the kitchen is not just for meals, but also for flower arranging. We're not formal about it, but every year sees frosts or storms that cause an exodus of blooms from the garden, seeking shelter in the house, and they must all be put up in vases. Sometimes we have over fifty scattered around the house at those times.

And like nearly everything else in this house, the vases have stories. The Orangina bottle found in the stone wall at the top of Baou Ste. Jeannet in Provence... The patent medicine bottle found in foundation stones we used to build the gardens, which says that, "Children cry out for more!" The tiny cut crystal salt shaker we used in our first apartment... The triangular bottles which a neighbor gave us for Christmas, filled with home made limoncello and orangecello, which later made that month's neighborhood poker game so memorable...