Titanarum

What is a bouquet? A small cluster or arrangements of flowers says the dictionary. Or a pleasingly sweet olfactory property. Well, yesterday I picked up what was once a bouquet. 12 long stemmed red roses and one single pink rose still in its plastic sheet, had been thrown out of a window round the corner. Scattered all over the pavement I reckon the act was the fall out from a romantic Valentines gesture. A woman had said: ‘Don’t think these can make up for the little shit you really are. Don’t think you can buy me with flowers. Expensive rings maybe, but a dozen roses from ASDA (this year they could be had for £4.99), forget it.’ I picked the sad things up and now, cut short and in fresh water, they are doing me proud. No pleasingly sweet olfactory properties, though, but hey. I’m easy with bouquets, me. If a dandelion flower wasn’t dark yellow and didn’t flop the minute you pick it, I’d be arranging them in little bouquets all the time. I don’t mind plastic either. In fact I’m rather taken with these balloon flowers. 10 out of 10 for effort and thinking outside the box.

Been fretting about xmas cards and pressies. I don’t seem able to buy a box of cards and spend an hour signing and sealing envelopes. No, I have to make my own cards. Similarly with flowers and plants. There’s not a single seasonal flower I can bear this time of year. So I buy rescue flowers in supermarkets and spend hours trimming and cutting and arranging into bouquets. The rescue element is that I pay a nominal amount for them whilst saving them from becoming supermarket landfill. A save save situation. That’s why you are looking at a bunch of pastel carnations with a bit of gypsophilia thrown in. I made four decent bouquets out of 6 bunches for less than £2, each complete with life prolonging satchet of flower food. The trick, if you agree that my bunch is not bad, is to cut off any buds that are either wizened or too small to ever open. The usual reason why the flowers end up reduced for quick sale is that some unthinking punter has pulled them out of their black bucket and, upon rejecting them, failed to push them back into the water. Or the staff failed to refill the buckets. Either way, having been trimmed and tended to, my rescue flowers are now in fine fettle. Happy spring. And merry summer.