CHAPTER XV
Table Decoration and Flowers in Season
Graceful arrangement—How to manage thick-skinned stems—Colour-schemes—Bad colours for artificial light—Preserving and resuscitating—Table of flowers in season.
The fashion of decorating tables to the extent now done is of comparatively recent date. When the duties were taken off the importation of foreign flowers, they became so much lower in price that the great middle-class could afford to buy some even in mid-winter. In the British Isles themselves, too, the carriage of flowers is much cheaper and more expeditious, though there is plenty of room for improvement still in that respect. The manner of arranging them has much altered, for, instead of cramming a clumsy vase to its utmost limits with a dozen different flowers of as many shades, only one, two, or at most three, kinds are now used, and these are set out in as graceful and airy a manner as possible. Plain glass vases, as a rule, show the blossoms off best, though pale green or ruby occasionally looks very well. The water need not be changed every day in all cases; it depends on the flower; wall-flowers, for instance, turn the water putrid very soon, while it keeps fresh much longer where roses are concerned. The vases should, however, be filled up once a day, as the stems suck up moisture rapidly. Hard-wooded flower stalks should receive special attention, or they will droop directly.
STEM-SPLITTING. Lilac, when cut and placed in water will absorb no more moisture than a lead pencil, unless the stems are split up; this can be done either with a hammer or a knife or both. As many leaves as possible should be left on the stems, for when under water they largely help to make the blossoms last well; it is only where the stalks are nearly leafless that the splitting and peeling is necessary.
Maidenhair fern may be made to last much longer if the end of the black, wiry stem is hammered for about an inch up.
It must not be forgotten that cutting from a plant strengthens it, and induces it to continue sending up flower-stalks. People often seem chary of cutting their roses with any length of stem, I suppose because it has leaves and shoots all the way up, but this is an error; they should be cut with about eight or ten inches of stalk; pansies and violas also look much more natural when a portion of the shoot is cut along with each blossom.
BY PARCEL POST. On hot summer days, when flowers are to be sent by post, they should be picked early in the morning, several hours before they are to be sent off, and placed in bowls of water; then, if they are packed close together in tin, wood, or even card-board boxes they will arrive quite fresh at their destination, where otherwise they would be hopelessly faded. When a box of flowers is received, the contents should be put in luke-warm water in a dim light for an hour or so; they can then be re-arranged in the vases they are intended to occupy.