Dear LPG, 

Have you noticed that once you get to a certain age all your friends seem to present a bit of a challenge at this time of year.  The problem is that they have everything that they need.  This means that finding appropriate Christmas presents can be a problem and birthdays are a challenge too.    

But there is and has always been the ultimate solution and that is either something smelly for the bath, a pot plant, or a bunch of flowers.  We all know that any sort of present which involves a fragrance can be risky, let’s face it, beauty is in the nose of the beholder as well as in the eye, and flowers are often so much more impressive than the pot plant.  So, we ladies, as we get older, must get a lot of them at certain times in the year and we are approaching one of those times now.

If you give them a lot, it also stands to reason that you must receive your fair share of them too and they are a beautiful gift when they arrive in a bouquet.  To my mind, the problems start when you take the wrapping away because, I have no idea about what to do with them at that stage and so I usually get one of my vases, put some water in and then take the entire bunch of stems and aim to get them through the neck of the vase and to the bottom, making sure that when I let go it all balances. 

It is obvious that I have no idea about getting them to look special and if they do, it is completely by accident.  I know that my method is not the best way to do it.  With some visitors it is just the look that their faces wear when they see one of my arrangements and I have been told by other visiting friends that I have no idea when it comes to what looks good in a vase.

In spite of my ignorance when it comes to the names of plants, this is something I plan to remedy this year by taking a basic flower arranging course, but having taken a look online, I have decided that there is no need to do that. YouTube has all the instruction you will need.

As I said, I know I am not the only flower arranging philistine and having found all this stuff I would like to pass it on, not only for the ladies who will have had the same experiences as me over the years but also for all those flowers whose beauty is wasted because of haphazard placement.

CC, Crofton Park 

CC shares some of what she has discovered… 

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…and LPG adds some information on today’s celebration… 

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