Like most patriotic natives, I have
to work on the garden. Once you start gardening there is always something to do.
I help take care of a regular size allotment where we grow mostly fruit and
some vegetables. Our annual harvest includes plums, raspberries, some pears a
few peaches, arugula, beans, potatoes zucchinis and pumpkins. This year there
has also been a TON of apples. Summer and early fall often mean many trips to
the garden and endless hours of home cooking pumpkin soup and other produce
from the garden. Although I am not a diehard fan of gardening there is one
great pleasure I derive from it and that is flowers.
From spring to the first November frosts we have
an almost steady supply of flowers from the garden. These are not heirloom
flowers with high highfalutin names but very ordinary blossoms that grow well
in all conditions but make a welcome decoration in any room.
I am not sure what these are called
but maybe they were brought from France
We start in spring with tulips ,then
marigolds, peonies are a major part of our summer as are gladiolas, garden
carnations and different varieties of
dahlias which along with roses stay up till late fall.
One of the last roses this year
These flowers do not generally last
very long , a few days maybe , a week at most ,but that is the ephemeral beauty
of fresh blooms. Even though these
flowers will never last as long a mass cultivated one there are still a few
things you can do to prolong their lives. I tend to avoid different kinds of
chemical stimulants as in my experience they only work for store bought
blossoms.
A bouquet after a few days
To start you should always cut the stems at an angle with a very sharp
knife to prevent any splintering of the fibres. This way the flowers can get
more nutrients and also they don’t directly stand on the “cut” when put in a vase.
The only exceptions are carnations where the stem should be broken off at
the node and not cut. It also a good
idea to take off any leaves on the stem which might be submerged in water, otherwise
the leaves will rot and pollute the water. Remember to keep a few leaves on the flower for
photosynthesis.
An essential part of displaying the flowers
has become the gathering of vases and other vessels to put them in. In my case
I stick quite strictly to clear glass containers if which I have in different
sizes and shapes. Bottles and long necked vases are great for single flowers,
cleaned out champagne bottles are
particularly good as they have a heavy base and do
not fall over easily , small flowers or broken off blooms are put into
tiny vases as I almost never want throw away a flower ,everything
else goes into regular vases with necks tall to support a whole bunch of
flora .The only “vase mistake ‘’I have
made to date was buying a ball shaped crystal vessel where everything just falls over the brim.
A red pon pon
No matter what you put your flowers
into, what they really need is clean water, ideally changed every 2 or 3 days, also
avoid putting them in direct sunlight in summer.
Recently I have also begun to
appreciate dried flowers for winter decoration, although that is a different
story.
