Floral tributes

Everyone loves flowers brought indoors. Those showy emblems of natural plant beauty add a dimension of grace and charm to your home, no matter how modest it may be. Allergies aside, at any time of year or on any whim we can enjoy the opulence of indoor bouquets that were formerly confined to their local season. This has been an economic boost for some South American countries whose exports to America were sometimes of the mostly illegal and harmful variety. If one assumes that the financial benefits and not the adverse conditions are shared with the workers, it has been a positive revolution in some communities to have an agricultural product that brings employment and improvement. Olé to that!

Still there have always been flowers available out of season, if one had the money to pay for them, but now everyone has the luxury of affordable exoticism flown in for our abundant delectation. Blessings upon us! At our house there are always fresh flowers placed for maximum effect: on the front entry, in the living room and bedroom. I don't ignore bathrooms and guest quarters for special occasions and the kitchen when appropriate. I say appropriate because the element of fragrance is one you simply must not ignore. This is one of those common sense precepts handed down from mother to daughter in many cases but I mention it because there is never a guarantee of maternal training in all matters domestic. You may find that an understatement, more is the pity.

Anyhoo, arrangements of flowers are encouraged whether they be truly and artfully 'arranged' or just dumped into a handy container. Be sure to trim the stems to fit the container height and in order to provide fresh stem area for water uptake. Remove any lower leaves of blooms that are below the water level. If you don't do that your flower water will turn to a wet soup of composting plant bits and shorten the duration of the life of the flowers whose time is already fleeting. Add some of that packaged flower life extender to the water if you wish. It likely contains an anti-bacterial agent and a little plant sugar to prolong the effect, though I have noticed that in practice it seems to curtail the floral fragrance. Try this with freesias and see for yourself.

Back to fragrance. As your mother may have told you, avoid fragrant flowers in the kitchen and forbid them in the dining room. Let's face it, the colors and textures can be quite satisfying on their own. Some flower smells can blend with, and I daresay interfere with, the aromas of appetizing food. I recently attended a particularly wonderful luncheon but the hostess, in her Spring enthusiasm, had prominently placed hyacinths all along the run of the table. This created a battle zone of sensory conflicts in every guest's face. It was difficult to appreciate the tasty and well prepared meal with so much heavy aroma cascading onto the plate. Grape hyacinth would have delivered a better 'Welcome Spring' announcement. Taste and smell are so allied with each other that the complement of one with the other must be subtly managed for a successful table. Manage your aromas for best effect and dedicate your table to the luxuries of color and texture exclusively, but by all means bring flowers indoors to share them.

With hugs, Celeste