Once, when asked what my favourite flowers were, I said Fresias, which, along with sweet peas, I do love. Both varieties are delicate and scented.
But lately, I have fallen for tulips. I love the way they bow down over the edge of their vase, I even love it when they drop their petals strategically around them, as if arranging themselves to be photographed.
In my last post, I included a picture of the tulips on my coffee table in just such a state. My expectation was that by today, they would be less beautiful, more candidates for the compost bin, but I was wrong.
The picture on the left was taken two days ago. See how the bottom left tulip is beginning to droop also the bottom right one. You would expect that two days later they would be even lower, but the picture on the right, taken today, shows that the tulips have perked up. I truly did nothing to them, I didn’t even change the water. By the way, as you can see behind the right hand picture, this morning, the dog was exhausted after a long session on the cross trainer.
Here is what happened to the tulips:
Someone told me that adding sugar and lemon juice to flower water was as good as one of those little sachets of stuff that come with some arrangements. I have tried it, and it does seem to work. I also learned from my days as a shop keeper, that adding bleach to flower water keeps the water fresher.
The tulips above arrived with a friend, visiting me after the death of my dad. Such lovely flowers and I put them straight into a couple of jugs, one on the kitchen table and the other in the lounge (above).
When she had left, I remembered that I hadn’t added the sugar and lemon juice. Damn! Now they were arranged, adding it would be a lot of bother, so I thought: sugar and lemon juice, that equates to sugar with acid. What do I have that is already in liquid form and contains sugar and acid?
I opened and closed cupboards without success, then went to the fridge. There, asking to be used up was an ancient bottle of pressed apple juice. That would do. I glugged about a cupful into each jug and hoped for the best. It didn’t look all that attractive, a greenish cloud floated at the bottom of the jugs but never mind.
Let us look at the even more upright arrangement in the kitchen.
Do you see the white line on the surface of the water?
What do you think it is?
Well… overnight, the apple juice began to ferment and that seems to be the reason for the tulips standing up.
I have no idea if anyone has discovered this amazing fact before: that drunken tulips stand up straight whereas drunken humans lie down.
PS. The tulips went into the vases on 3rd May. The original pictures were taken on 5th May, 2021 and 7th May 2021. Today, 12th May 2021, nine days after receipt, I am consigning the tulips to the compost bin. Here is a picture of them:
Still upright, petals like paper but stil intact. So weird.