Valentine's Day has come and gone and flower prices have come back down from the stratosphere. This holiday always serves to remind me how nice it is to bring home a bouquet, and I love seeing people with them everywhere in the streets, on buses and subways and the backs of bicycles.
Like the wafting aroma of a good bakery's bread, the presence of flowers peeking out from grocery bags and under jacket sleeves brings with it a good vibe. In the busy times of the year it feels like I don't really have time to go into a florist and orchestrate a bouquet, and I find myself running into local grocery stores to get the ready-made combo.
Dean & Deluca has to be one of my favorites (Wholefoods had some gorgeous monochromatic green bouquets this past week, too). Their flowers arrive chilled and tight. Even though you can get two dozen at the deli for the price of Dean & Deluca's dozen roses ($13.00), you can always count on the quality.
I have had roses last two weeks and they always open beautifully.
Their mixed bouquets this week had combinations of buttery yellow, ivory, cream, and light peach roses. Their combination of supporting flowers are always beautiful and the color combinations subtle and you can buy them separately if you want. They had groups of yarrow, sweet William, oriental lily, craspedia, and something called blue perum', which looks to be something out of the nasturtium family. For a total of $23.00, a dozen pink roses and blue perum would be a knockout combination.
Right now they have peonies, which come from Holland at $6.00 per stem and look like beds of soft down feathers (I would wait a few months and you can get the local ones for much less, though). Their carmine red and yellow parrot tulips were also beautiful, straight out of a botanical illustration.
For those of you on-the-go people, where do you find the best ready-made bouquets in the city?
The NYBG Orchid show coming up it's worth the trip!:
http://www.nybg.org/orchid_show06.php
- Matt N.
(not maxwell. that's autofill)
By the way - thank you for the PlantTherapy shout-out over in Flickr, Guido!
This thread is definitely timely...
Saw a guy riding a bicycle this morning with a backpack full of what looked like cherry blossom branches. It looked so great, and actually did make me feel happy. Wanted to ask him if I could snap his picture, but didn't want to scare him!
we were missing you matt!
if you're ever in Park Slope, especially if you are ever getting out of the train at 4th Ave and 9th St (F/R)
there's a guy with a TEENEY shop on 4th Ave (10/11th St) that sell soup, stellar tamales, and very special cut flowers.
He almost always has small dark purple calalillies.
Parrot tulips!!! I am usually more architectural in my flower preferences (okay, that sounds snooty, but wasn't meant to).. but I am an EXTREME sucker for these outrageous, gorgeous showy tulips!! I really want some now... the perfect antidote to our gray, blowy weather today.
Fiona--
ANY guy ANYWHERE would be outrageously flattered if YOU offered to snap a picture!! ;)
Has the warm weather snap done something for flowering trees? Judging from Prospect Park, I'm guessing not but...
for instance, will that great stall on the east side of the Union Sq Greenmarket on Saturdays have great 5' bundles tomorrow?
Any blossoming bundle sightings in Chinatown NYC?
Guido--
OOOHH! I LOVE those purple, almost leather-like Calla Lillies!! (my second favorite to the chartreuse ones)
Now I REALLY want to get flowers. Especially since nobody sent me any for Valentines Day. (insert big sympathetic sigh here...)
Guido-
Chinatown was FULL of bundles for the lunar new year. I was at the flower market, but it was nothing spectacular in terms of getting great deals. It was more like your one-stop-shopping for new year supplies.
The warm weather might be affecting the blossoming schedules of some trees, but not sure if they would be doing so close enough to NY to appear at the GreenMarket. But who knows? We'll have to keep an eye out! One way to find out would be to ask Remco on Mondays when he is arranging the Met flowers, since he is always buying up flowering branches over at U.S. Evergreen. We'll see what he has to say...
P2, I just love you! You know how to sweet-talk a girl. ;)
Patrick,
Consider the slideshow your virtual bouquet - from me to you. And that little shop in Park Slope sounds great, Guido. On the rebound from yet another epic cold, so maybe I should go there and get my flower AND my soup fix. I think the purple callas would look great in P2's place from what we have seen of it.
I LOVE bicycles with flowers on the back racks. Something very nostalgic about that.
Most days I get to know nothing of use about my neighbors here in the city. And anything offered up is usually more about the misery of commuting or not getting along - the only peek into their lives I will ever know. But I love looking around on one day and seeing the mark that says all of these strangers love someone or are loved. It's nice, and a much nicer bit of information to know about someone you have never spoken to.
Sing & Sing market sells this one particular combination of Gerber Daiseys and some other things together in colors that just automatically go great with the "wallpaper" colors in my kitchen, so I tend to buy them there, when I want to gussy up the place for company.
Curtis--
We are HIGHLY disappointed that you are not buying white flowers and custom painting them. ;)
Matt, those photos are absolutely beautiful! What kind of camera do you use? Is is one of those "oh forget it - I can't afford that" or is it a plain old digital or something easy? I want to take pictures like that.
Curtis, it's true.
p(2), thanks for the gafaw of the day.
p.s.
That BK stand also has the green calas. O LA!
p.p.s.
Get Well Soon Matt
I thought you'd be highly disappointed with my spelling of daisies, so I wipe my brow with relief, at only disappointing once in a post.
Anne,
I use a Leica Digilux. I think there was a thread over in The Kitchen where people talked about what cameras they liked. You can get a Digilux used on eBay for around $350 and it works like a digital SLR. It has a HUGE display on the back so you can see your shots clearly. Not your point and shoot kind of camera (although it does have auto mode), but still pretty intuitive. There is a newer version of the Digilux that has 8 mega pixel resolution and I know that goes for well over $1000. I would love to upgrade! I used to have a Fuji Finepix and it also took really wonderful photos. The auto modes did a very nice job.
Truth be told, I do pass these photos through Photoshop. I wish that my photo skills were better, but I always need a little help from PS. All of the photos this week were taken in dim and fluorescent lighting, so I felt especially good about the results - but the beautiful arrangements are the real reason for nice pics. The photos that needed the least work were the ones from two weeks back when I visited Spruce. They had beautiful, bright and diffused northern light that was easy to shoot in.
Anne,
You made me curious so Iooked on eBay for that Digilux 2. Turns out it's more like $1800 and has 5 mega pixels. Sorry about the misinformation. At that price I don't imagine I will be trading up any time soon...