On Saturday we had friends to lunch in Southampton, including two of New York’s great ladies, at least in my opinion. It was to be a casual lunch, but I still wanted the place to look particularly nice. Time was short, though. We wouldn’t arrive until late on Friday, and Saturday morning would be filled with grocery shopping, cooking, our toddler daughter Julia’s routine and an ill-timed meeting with a house painter. There would be no time to find and arrange flowers.
Fortunately, it’s that time of year when the most beautiful floral arrangements are, literally, growing on trees. Fruit trees are blooming in the Northeast now, and dogwoods and lilacs are on the way. If you don’t have branches you can (legally) cut yourself, flower shops are filled with budded branches right now, at very reasonable prices. On the way out of town, I picked up the large bunch of lilac shown above for about $30, and the larger bunch of flowering cherry shown below for about $25, both at the flower shops on 28th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues.
Lilac rarely keeps for more than a few days, but flowering branches like cherry can look good for a couple of weeks if you buy them mostly in bud and change the water often. (A drop of bleach in the water helps keep it clear.) And there’s really no time-consuming arrangement required. A fresh cut at the bottom and a tall vase are all you need to create a nearly foolproof dramatic display in just a few minutes. For a simple, sturdy vase suitable for this sort of thing, I like the Palmetto vases at Crate and Barrel for $29.95 – $39.95, depending on the size (www.crateandbarrel.com).
