If you were to live in the countryside and had neighbors that grew flowers, you might share with each other the cuttings from your own garden. In passing along a share of the day's harvest you might also pass along the advice on how to best keep them, ensuring that your hard work could be enjoyed in the vase for more than a day.
In the city, this is a rare exchange, but a good florist should have advice when you bring home something special.
I was so happy to see two buckets of beautiful (and fragrant!) poppies at my florist this week. Poppies are delicate flowers which have fleeting lives in the garden, and can go even quicker once in a vase. Poppy stems contain sap that feeds the flower. It will drain out quickly once cut and placed in a vase of water, so a flame is used to close up the bottom of the stem and prevent the sap from draining. When you buy poppies take a look at the stem bottom and you will most likely see that they have no black hairs and have taken on a dark green color from being singed. If you give yours a fresh cut you will need to seal them off again, otherwise they will be limp within a day.
We have enjoyed these beautiful flowers for the past five days. They come to the bedroom at night and follow us to the kitchen in the morning. They radiate warmth, and we cannot stop looking at their many details. Sometimes conversation will stop as one of use is caught looking into their centers.
Poppies are at once large and brilliant, but are reduced to nothing once they have decided to die. What remains causes one to barely believe that an enormous, vibrant flower once stood in the same spot. I was once shown how to gild by a restorationist friend, a man who spent many decades restoring churches throughout Europe. He pulled out his simple tools from an old case along with a small pack of gold leaf sheets. With his expert hand guiding a small knife, he took the glowing top sheet and transported it through the air. He wove the knife back and forth, the gold sheet fluttering delicately before steering it to rest perfectly flat on the table surface. And then, with a flourish, he crumpled the brilliant sheet, causing it to vanish.
matt at apartmenttherapy dot com
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
Beautiful.
Oh, how I love poppies.....they are a joy to behold, an inspiration, and a reminder of the beauty our world gives to us. Thank you, Maxwell, for your delightful story and the beautiful images!
Beautiful. And Matt, your description of the guilder and his skill is breathtaking.
Thank you.
Matt--
Your photos and writing just keep getting better and better. And they weren't too shabby to start with!
That first phot is really staggeringly beautiful.
Can you share how you are saving these pics (resolution, size, etc.)?
Hope--
To clarify, the PlantTherapy posts are written and photographed by the talented (and I won't embarrass him again by calling him cute or adorable) Matt.
And Matt, I second J(too)... that tie in to the guilding story was pretty inspired.
whoops-- photo, gilding
We're in the midst of Spring. The plum blossom are still with us, the cherries are gradually drifting to the sidewalks, and the pears have just started blooming.
the grow old dirt machine grr'woes way back, 'well' not as far away as water.
antfarm.
What do you all think of fake plants? More specifically, fake orchids?
reasons for the seasons.
http://www.nnyn.org/nnyninseason46.html
Please put spell check on AT. Yeesh...I can't believe I said guild....(well, maybe there's a gilder's guild?)
Love your photos. What camera are you using?
My sincerest compliments, Matt!
Great post-- thanks so much. Can I ask what florist you use? I have seen poppies at the stores in the flower district, and sometimes at Ovando in the West Village... I would love to know of some other NYC sources since, as you explain, they are pretty unusual due to their delicacy.
I pass by Century Florist on my way home almost every day. It is very far from you, on the UES at Lex. and 80th. Around Thurs. they get in big shipments and always seem to have something special. I don't know how they do it.
L'Olivier (on 14th), Utowa, or FLORA carry great quality flowers and are closer to you. You may want to also check out Hudson River Flowers down in the W. Village. I also like Spruce and they might have poppies in the summertime.
Also recently stumbled across a new flower shop in the W. Village and I cannot remember their name but they had beautiful flowers, very Latin feeling to the whole shop. Either on Hudson or Greenwich. I'll have to find it again.
Recently Century Florist had water lily blossoms. I do not think I have ever seen that at a local flower shop. I bought one and it disintegrated within hours, but was so beautiful.
PS - Poppies are not so unusual once summer rolls around. Right now they are kind of hard to come by.
What nice comments! Makes it pleasant to come back to the computer after the weekend.
My camera is a D-Lux 2, a Leica camera that is not a DSLR, just a very intense point-and-shoot with a great lens. All the photos, from the beginning of my city flower pics, are on a hard drive in hi-res RAW/TIF formats. My work is simple, just going with what happens to be in front of the lens, along with available light.
Many points of interest in the posts above. I love reading about plants - the link that ION provided had some very interesting words on the power of poppies. Flowers do not cease to be complicated and valuable once they come in contact with the urban environment. We just tend to not notice. I try to stop once per week and notice, and it is great when people contribute. And eBrown, you know that even our city cannot dodge the effects of our recent odd weather.
Hope has great photos of flowers - I wonder what camera YOU use? :)
Patrick, it's the flowers that are inspired. I believe that when you pay a bit more for something like these poppies you cannot help but be inspired by them. Throughout the week I imagined my curtains being made of a similar material as the saffron colored poppy petals. The center ovary that becomes the pod would make a really amazing ottoman design (dibs on the idea!).
Another thing about poppies, they are a real gamble for a florist to invest in. The blossoms have that tough external husk. The florist often has to coax and help the blossoms from their husk. And even then, if they were not picked by the grower at the right time, the florist can end up with a bunch of poppies that wilt before they can open up. They also cannot be cooled for long periods like other flowers. They need to be cut and sent FAST.