Ikebana Vase from pre-fire Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

I knew nothing about ikebana (a certain Japanese art of flower arrangement) until I bought this pretty little vase:

My husband and I were celebrating our first wedding anniversary on May 3, with a short trip up the coast to Santa Barbara. Of course we had no idea that two days later a horrible fire would sweep through, and we would be among the last to enjoy some of the beautiful countryside north of the city.

The highlight of our trip was the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, a collection of California's most beautiful and diverse wildlife. We were devastated to learn later that it sustained significant damage in the fire. The eerie timing of our visit will probably mark it as memorable enough, but at the time we wanted to get a little memento from the gift shop. They had several of these beautiful ikebana vases, which it turns out are actually made in Maine by Georgetown Pottery.

I love how they seem to defy gravity, with an incredibly shallow vessel supporting impossibly vertical arrangements. The secret is the "pin frog," a metal disk with a bunch of pins sticking straight up, into which you press the stem of the flower.

I wonder what kinds of interesting found objects I could make into vases with some of these pin frogs and a hot glue gun... I'll have to keep an eye out at the next flea market!