Gifts that will Please a Flower Lover
You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
--_Moore._
CHRISTMAS giving to the flower lover is a matter of delight, for if you
stop to think you will know what the recipient will be sure to
appreciate. Cut flowers always afford joy, from an inexpensive bunch of
carnations to the choicest American Beauties. The Christmas blooming
plants, however, last much longer, and the rich scarlet berries of the
ardesia will survive the holiday season by several months. Poinsettia
has been steadily increasing in popularity, and can be surrounded by
ferns that will live on indefinitely. All the decorative foliage plants
are sure to be welcomed, for with care they will last for years, and
improve in size and beauty.
The growing fad for winter-blooming bulbs affords another opportunity
for pleasing. If you did not start in time to grow to flower yourself,
give your friend one of the new flat lily bowls, procurable from fifty
cents up, and with it a collection of bulbs for succession of bloom.
These may be started in any kind of dishes with pebbles and water, set
in a cool, dark place until the roots start, and then brought out to the
light as desired. With narcissi at three cents each, Chinese lilies at
ten cents, and fine hyacinths up to twenty cents, for named varieties, a
dollar's worth will keep her in flowers for the rest of the winter.
Pretty little stem holders, made in pottery leaves, mushrooms, frogs,
etc., cost only from forty cents to fifty cents, and will be nice to use
in the bowl afterward, for holding any kind of cut flowers. We are
adopting more and more the Japanese method of displaying a few choice
specimens artistically, and assuredly this way they do show up to better
advantage. Many new vases are displayed for the purpose. A charming
Japanese yellow glaze, ten in. high, with a brown wicker cover, I saw
for only a dollar and a quarter, while the graceful Japanese yellow
plum blossom shown with it at thirty-five cents a spray, was a delight
to the eye. A slender ground glass vase in a plated cut silver holder
was only twenty-five cents, while the Sheffield plate bud vase was but
fifty cents. These could be duplicated in cut glass and sterling silver
at almost any price one wished to pay.
Venetian glass is quite fashionable, and can be had in all colors--red,
blue, green, yellow and black, and while expensive, has been imitated in
domestic ware at reasonable prices. Some of the new pottery bowls come
in unusual shapes, in white, gray, green, blue, and many are small
enough for a single bulb. A lover of the narcissus myself, I am
delighted with the idea of bringing out my paper whites one at a time,
so as to keep a lovely gray-green piece in use all winter. One of my
friends, on the other hand, is growing hers in groups of half-a-dozen,
the warm brown of the bulbs harmonizing most artistically with her
delicately colored stones in a brown wicker-covered Japanese glazed
dish.
This brown Japanese wicker, by the way, is most decorative, and can be
found in various kinds of baskets, metal-lined, for cut flowers or
plants of that grow in water,--some as low as ten cents apiece. A
tall-handled basket of this kind is now standing on my buffet,
beautiful with the varigated trailing sprays of the Wandering Jew. One
could not ask for a more satisfying arrangement.
Enamelled tinware, hand-painted, is new, too, and comes in many pottery
shapes, though strange to say, often at higher prices. Hand-painted
china butterflies, bees and birds, at from twenty-five cents to fifty
cents, are among this year's novelties, and look very realistic when
applied invisibly with a bit of putty to the edge of bowl or vase. Some
of the birds are painted on wood, life-sized, and mounted on long
sticks, to be stuck in among growing plants or on the tiny trellises
used for indoor climbers.
Many novelties in growing things can be found at the florist's--from the
cheapest up to all you feel like paying. A dainty new silver fern, big
enough for a small table, comes in a thumb pot at only ten cents.
Haworthia is cheap, too, and has the advantage of being uncommon. More
and more do we see of the dwarf Japanese plants, many quite inexpensive.
The Japanese cut leaf maple, for example, can be bought for seventy-five
cents. All are hardy, and suitable for small table decorations.
The new "air plant," or "Wonder of the Orient" (really an autumn
crocus), surprises every one not acquainted with it, as it flowers
during the late fall and early winter, without either soil or water, as
soon as put in the sunlight for a few days. Better still, when through
blooming, it will live through the year if put in soil, and store up
enough energy to repeat the performance when taken out next season.
Costing a dollar each when first introduced here, it can now be bought
as low as ten cents a bulb.
Japanese fern balls, black and unpromising as they look when purchased,
respond to plenty of light, heat and water by sending out the daintiest
kind of feathery ferns in a few weeks, and will last for several years.
They cost only thirty-five cents, too. Quaint, square pottery jars,
suspended in pairs by a cord over a little wheel, like buckets on a well
rope, make unusual hanging baskets and can be filled with your favorite
vines and flowers.
Garden tools are always acceptable as the old ones wear out or get lost,
and you can choose from the three-prong pot claw at a nickel up to the
fully equipped basket at several dollars. Handwoven cutting baskets,
mounted on sharp sticks for sticking in the ground when you are cutting
your posies, cost two dollars and a half, but will last for years. Small
hand-painted, long-spouted watering cans, for window sprinkling, cost
less than a dollar and look pretty when not in use. And for the person
with only a window garden, the self-watering, metal-lined window boxes,
that preclude dripping on the floor, will be a boon indeed.
Goldfish are pretty sure to please, for your flower lover is also the
nature lover. Even the tiniest bowl is attractive, and one I saw
recently had been in the house over two winters. The globe, however,
does not meet our modern ideas for the reason that the curved glass
reduces the area of water exposed to the air, so is bad for the fish.
The new all-glass aquariums can be bought in either the square or
cylindrical shapes, from a dollar and a quarter up, according to size
and quality, while the golden inmates can be found from five cents, for
the child's pet up to the fancier's Japanese prize-winner at one
thousand dollars. Your aquarium will require no change of water, either,
if properly balanced. Put in for the fishes' needs such oxygen-producing
plants as milfoil, (Millefolium,) fish grass, (Cabomba,) common arrow
head, (Sagittaria natans,) and mud plant, plantain, (Heteranthera
Reniformis,) the first and third being especially good together. These
in turn will thrive on the carbonic acid gas the fish exhale, so that
one supports the other. A snail or two (the Japanese red, at twenty-five
cents, preferred for looks,) and a newt will act as scavengers, and keep
the water clear as crystal. For food, put in a small quantity of meat
once a week, as the commercial "fish food" eventually causes
tuberculosis.
Birds, too, are generally popular with flower lovers. Canaries probably
are the stand-bys, though in the cities the uncommon little beauties
often are preferred. Polly, however, holds her own, and with many people
is the favorite.
Books,--always a safe and inexpensive gift,--are obtainable for the
flower lover, in the most fascinating editions. They cover all phases of
the subject, indoors and out, from the window garden to the vast estate,
the amateur to the professional grower. And no true gardener could sit
down by a blazing log on a blizzardy night, with Helena Rutherford Ely's
"The Practical Flower Garden," or L. B. Holland's "The Garden Blue
Book," filled with wonderful photographs and colored plates, without
quickly becoming lost to the storm outside, and conscious only of
sun-kissed lawns with blossoms nodding in the breeze. Heaven? Your
friend will already be in imagination's Paradise, with an increasing
sense of gratitude over your thoughtful selection.