Succulents as Flowers for Lent

Every year at St. Peter's, dozens of folks donate and dedicate lilies at Easter and poinsettias at Christmas; I imagine this is a common practice at many churches. However, this year a third, less floral, request was made for Lent: succulents. I admit, when I first heard the idea, I had a hard time imagining cacti having any place in the church; usually we have two gorgeous floral bouquets flanking the altar. I'm happy to report that I was very wrong; succulent arrangements can be absolutely stunning! I did a bit of boning up on the subject of the use of succulents in non-traditional ways; it's not unusual for them to be used in wedding bouquets, if they fit the wedding's theme. Anyway, I made a two-sided, half-page form that went into the Sunday bulletin for three weeks. Here's the front:

And here's the back:

Fairly straightforward stuff. It might be worth noting a trick that you may or may not be aware of where the use of fonts that don't come with a "bold" option are concerned. As much as I love the font Libra (appearing here in purple), one of its shortcomings is it doesn't have a bold option. You can fake one, however, by giving it a stroke of the same color; I find that half a point is usually sufficient. If you're new to doing layout in InDesign, you might wonder where the option for giving a fractional stroke is; the pulldown menu only offers whole numbers. You can highlight that little box next to the pulldown menu and type in ".5". Along those lines, if you're using Word you don't need to be limited to the font sizes that appear in the pulldown menu; they usually only go to 72 or something. Put your cursor in that box and type in whatever number you want (within reason). Whoops, I really didn't plan to start babbling about graphic design; back to the subject of succulents! Here's one of our two arrangements, which were displayed throughout Lent in copper bowls…

…and were eventually planted on the grounds of the church in time for Easter. Next time I'm at work I'll take and post a photo of them in their new location (as you can imagine, after Holy Week we're all taking Monday off). I'm curious, did your church do displays of succulents for Lent or do you have another tradition? Comments are welcome and encouraged!