The birds are chirping outside, and we have May-like weather here in Minnesota in March!
One of my favorite things to enjoy in this earliest time of spring is forced branches! I used some this last weekend that I had purchased, and were already flowering, for my baby shower centerpiece. I love how natural it all turned out.
But now it's time to harvest some of my own branches, and bring them in to warm up and bud out, before Easter!
I grab my clippers, and make sure to snip green branches-those that are still alive.
In my yard, I get branches from my lilacs, my apple tree, and my crabapple trees. If you have forsythia, flowering plum, dogwood, or any other spring flowering tree, I think they would work also. Bringing the branches in your warm house, just tricks them into starting some leaves and flowers.
Apple is on the left, lilac in the middle, and crabapple on the right. The crabapple is a little thorny, which is kind of appropriate for Easter decor.
I find random vessels and fill them with lukewarm water. I don't use any floral preservative, but that would probably help them. I just change out the water every few days.
The already-flowered ones are from the shower. I will sometimes tuck a few fake flowers in with them, to give them a little punch until their green leaves start showing.
My mom always trimmed her lilacs a couple weeks before Easter and would make an Easter tree, so I've carried on that tradition with my kids. "Made in China" decor never looked so good!
I also use the fake flowering branches in my outdoor pots this time of year, when there's not much else to use-except maybe pansies-but they're too short to see from the road!
I'm not usually a fake-flower-outside kinda girl, but at this time of year...it works. I've had a lot of people think they were real!
Hope you grab your clippers and get outside to your yard or a neighbors, and start that Easter/spring decorating!
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