Their soft petals ruffled and cascaded into each other. Underneath the bud openings, twistingly a-jostle, the stems' cut lines reached the bottom.
Angles of cut lead crystal collided glimpses of the petal and blue checks from the tablecloth. Petals, yellow petals on blue, petals on purple petals, colors Mendel would be proud of.
"My mother would always plant pansies," she said when I glanced at the table. " In the springtime, we cut them and put them in little vases smaller than that crystal sugar bowl," she said.
She did not tell me the bowl was once her grandmothers'. I did not need to be told.
"Pansies were cheap," she said.
We looked at the pansies silently for a time.
Cheap? Maybe. But ever so, ah, beautiful.