Arranging Flowers

Nothing is more restful to the nerves, nor more conducive to the delight of the eye, than a few beautiful flowers well arranged in a vessel suited to them and placed with taste in the spots that become them.

Cutting flowers is an easy operation, and yet an important one, which must be carried out with all precision and care so that the flowers may live long in their vessels. They must be cut in the early morning, while they are still fresh, covered with the refreshing dew of night; immediately afterward they are placed in a deep vessel holding a generous quantity of water. After that they are put in a moist place until the proper time comes to arrange them in the vessels. Care should be taken to cut the flowers when they are just beginning to open, and it is also well to cut a centimeter or two from the flower stems directly before arranging them in their vessels, and again after a day or two, when the beginning of wilting is noticed in them.

A lady should take great pains in choosing the vessel suited to the flowers, just as she takes pains in choosing the kinds and colors of her clothes according to times, circumstances, and occasions. Short-stemmed flowers are put in short, narrow vessels, or arranged in flat, very broad vessels, so that the blossoms appear, with the water around them, like little islands abounding in flowers. Flowers of medium height, or tall ones, are arranged in tall vessels, so that their form and size appear in proportion to the size of the container.

In general, not many flowers should be put into the vessels. There is nothing uglier than the sight of crowded flowers.

When it is desired to put flowers of different colors into a single vessel, care must be taken that the colors can blend together. Clashing colors are a mote in the eye. It may perhaps be useful for me to mention that light red mixes successfully with the violet colors, and that the light blue or sky-blue colors blend beautifully with the light yellow and lemon colors.

It is much better to place dark-colored flowers in a spot near the window, or in a spot that receives abundant light directly; otherwise their appearance will be unattractive.

And flowers differ in their expression in the vessels. Furthermore, duty requires that the vessels of flowers be taken out of rooms artificially heated during the nights of winter, for leaving them in such rooms the whole night long hastens their wilting.