Never, ever have I been the recipient of so many gorgeous flowers! (Of course, never ever have I been such a venerable age!) Our house looks like a florist’s shop. There are bouquets everywhere – twelve huge vases of blossoms. Plus several pots and a basket full!
For starters were the 80 long-stemmed red roses from Nyel – a long-time birthday tradition. Not the number – usually it’s a dozen. This year it was over the top. Then there are the tulips that just ‘appeared’ in the kitchen – the tallest, pinkest most tulippy cut flowers I’ve ever seen. Plus, from Jon and Pat, tulips budding out as we speak – hydroponically!
There are ‘spring bouquets’ – one an FTD arrangement from son Charlie and another gigantic yet delicate, just-this-minute-picked-from-their-garden arrangement from friends Stephen and John who live on the old Clark Nursery grounds. It’s not only knock-your-eye-out spectacular, but full of old-fashioned fragrance of the wafting-out-in-the-evening variety. I walk back and forth past it breathing in the Daphne. Ahhhh!
There is an orchid plant, loaded with buds, from my neighbor Martie and a pot of narcissus plants (narcissi?) from Vickie and Fred. And on Tuesday, here came “Love in a Box” – four dozen long, long, long stemmed roses in pinks and reds from Paul and Lana Jane in Florida – the most fragrant roses I’ve smelled in years. Which set me to wondering… where has all the fragrance gone? According to Eric Slater in a 1999 L.A. Times article:
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n an effort to satisfy the American taste for things bigger, brighter and longer-lasting, breeders of cut flowers have produced specimens with perfectly giant buds, eye-searing colors and the ability to survive in a vase sometimes for weeks. Along the way, they also have bred out much of the fragrance, according to many horticulturists and an emerging body of scientific evidence. Many mass-produced roses and other favorites have no detectable scent at all.
But… there is hope. Apparently, breeders are beginning to bring back some of heritage varieties of old-fashioned flowers like sweet peas and peonies and, yes, roses. I’m happy about that and I’m sure the bees are, too. Which brings up a host of other questions. After all, scent supposedly is one of the traits that plants have used to attract pollinators…
Some of those eyes searing colors are artificial and I don’t want them. I bought carnations yesterday that sadly have no scent.