Mom and me, a calligraphy project for Mothers Day

I'm posting this one day early, in case you want to give your mom a calligraphy rose.  
I have a few guiding principles in calligraphy, which could be boiled down to "A letter can be anything; anything can be a letter."  When I look at letters I see flowers; when I look at flowers I see letters.   

A note about mixed media; I used bottled watercolor ink [Dr Ph Martin brand], with a flat oil-painting brush, on the Arches Satine paper printmaking paper that I rely on for calligraphy.  The graded wash is something I learned to do in a watercolor course I took five years ago. The red-pink idea came to me from some colored pencil doodling I did recently with my niece Lisbeth’s daughter Kamilla in Brooklyn. 

I am also fond of the idea that "Letters are all you need on the page."  This calligraphy for Mothers Day turns the words MOM AND ME into a rose. Red petals form a coiled O. The leaves, stem, and thorns make M s, as well as the bud, which makes the M that cradles a tiny rolled up e. 

I'm posting this today even though I think my own mom's favorite flowers were actually lilacs, and I'm partial to hydrangea.  I think she'd understand.  All those little petals would be hard to turn into letters.  But not impossible.