Winter bouquet

From Perrott's Florists, the best flowermongers in town, BAR NONE.

The first time I heard of them was a few years ago when Pete gave me a gorgeous arrangement of dark-red roses: my little heart nearly stopped and I floated away on clouds of happiness. Of course, that was then and this is now. Now I only get flowers after dropping Several Obvious Hints. Or I just buy them for myself.

Anyway, I really think flowers are important for everyone's general wellbeing, and it's also important to buy them from a florist, not from the supermarket. So these roses were completely stunning, and they had a subtle tag inside (no stickers here!) with their name on it. So I popped down to check them out, and discovered they have their own floristry school at Herston, plus outlets at New Farm and Bulimba. They are also the official (is that right?) florist for the Royal Brisbane Hospital.

The lovely lady at the Bulimba store chatted with me over the phone about what they could do up in the way of a decadent, fragrant, not-too-bright-colour scheme, birthday bouquet. I hung up feeling fairly confident, but still with that faint feeling you have when you are trying out a new business for the first time and you really want them to get it just right, and you know in your head exactly what you want and you really hope you got your vision across to them, because there's a faint chance you both totally got your wires crossed and you are going to end up with some trashy bunch of neon gerberas... not that there's anything WRONG with gerberas, but they just wouldn't be right at all. But I was eventually able to convince myself to let go, to leave it to the professionals. After all, those red roses were stunning.

When I went down to collect the bouquet, it was beautiful beyond my wildest dreams. Gorgeous deep pink and blue stocks, variegated red roses, jonquils... and straight away I congratulated myself for trusting Perrott's to get this right, while simultaneously feeling jealous (jealousss!) that these were for someone else and not me.

Oh well, I did show them to Pete and give explicit instructions ("See these? This is What I Want For My Birthday. And also, at random times of the year, for no special reason") so now we'll just wait and see.

I misted them with water dutifully every couple of hours so they kept their freshness.

When I passed them on to their rightful owner, they were a big success. Gone to a good home!