#JA14 Blue Grey Gerbera Daisy

At some point between ordering takeout and contemplating what to hang above a bed, my sister became obsessed with ceramic flowers. Not the gaudy imitation flowers our grandmother used to collect ?€? plastic monstrosities that looked like they'd been salvaged from a defunct miniature golf course ?€? but rather these eerily beautiful wall-mounted pieces that seemed to float like gray ghosts against her apartment walls.

"It's modern artwork," she declared, as if daring me to disagree. "From some company called Chive." The medium-sized bloom she'd just installed was neither small enough to be precious nor large enough to be ostentatious. It hung there, somewhere between art and artifice, like a flower that had forgotten to color itself in. I watched as she transformed her walls into what she called a "gallery of botanical curiosities."

Each piece of wall art decor was positioned with the precision of a heart surgeon, though I suspected her measuring tape had been replaced with pure intuition and three glasses of Chardonnay. "You're not seriously going to leave that there?" I asked, pointing to the latest addition. She sighed "some people collect cats. I collect ceramic flowers that judge you while you sleep."