I just wanted to share this absolutely hilarious message from a guest.

[Deb18]

I got the following message from a guest after I sent her note telling her I popped into the accommodations to freshen the flowers.  Wow.  You just can't win with some of them, right?  So hilarious:

"I did love the pink alstromeria and I was just about to remark on them to my son and his girlfriend when I noticed they'd been changed! And I'm not much of a yellow person so I'd take the pinks back if you still have them~ I used to be a flower grower and vendor and have a pretty defined color scheme I prefer~ but I can live with the yellow ones. Thanks for letting me know you'd been in while I was out."

[Huma0]

@Mark116  I think i’ve  only ever had one guest mention the flowers in a review. None of the others have, not even during the month of flowers mentioned above!

like you, I cherish every bloom in my limited flower beds and would hate to chop them off. One year I tried to cultivate a mini cutting garden in separate containers on my terrace, but even then, they looked so pretty growing, I couldn’t bear to cut them. I think I only took one vaseful for inside the house.

i am going to try your formula. I often put a little bit of sugar in if the shop bought blooms don’r come with flower food and have heard about using bleach, but not lemon juice. I’m not a fan of using bleach generally so do you 5hink it would work with just the sugar and lemon?

[Mark116]

@Huma0 If you don't put in at least a little bleach it will mold, at least mine have done the times I was too lazy to get the bleach from the basement laundry, LOL.   But you could play around with it a little, maybe less sugar.  But, I just looked up the  original 'recipe' and it's teaspoons not tablespoons, haha, so maybe that's why it has molded before, since I realize I've been making with tablespoons, so superpowered.  Some DIYs say use vinegar, so you could try that instead of bleach.

[Huma0]

@Mark116 

I also heard that a little washing up liquid (dish soap) works. Have you tried it?

[Cathie19]

Oh @Huma0. I do love the sight of wild bluebells along the roadside or in a field. 💙

[Huma0]

@Cathie19  If you have space to fill, wild garlic, which looks a lot like bluebells, but white, will grow prolifically in sun or shade, as will muscari (grape hyacinth) if you prefer blue. They do look pretty planted en masse, need no maintenance and multiply like crazy.

However, it’s wise to use caution as both are very invasive, so not suited for small spaces, and best kept contained as they can smother other plants. 

[Cathie19]

Huma, my youngest daughter is returning to Darwin to get married in July, with the reception in our back yard, so I’m in urgent mode breaking off extra cuttings of crotons, cordylines and bromeliads and shoving them into the soil, and established before the end of the wet season... seasonal florals will go in near the date. So that also means closing the hosting books across that time as well! Very busy and exciting!  

[Ben551]

Hey @Huma0  did you know there are kinds of lavendar that you can grow all year around indoors? We used to grow them in Scotland even through winter, but I'm originally from London... then Dorset.. then Scotland.  So yeah, lots of indoor flower growing opportunities, I'm sure you know about already 🙂  My favourite one in the UK was Kalanchoe (Flaming Katy) because you basically can't kill it.

[Huma0]

@Ben551I have actually killed a few Kalanchoe, as well as sempervivums, which literally translates as 'always living' because they are supposedly so hard to kill! For some reason, I have much less luck with houseplants than with plants in the garden or on the roof terrace (my sempervivums do quite well on the latter).

However, right now I do have a lovely array of spring bulbs on the kitchen window sill including naricssi, hyacinths and amarylis (which was supposed to bloom at Christmas, but has been putting on a show for the whole of February instead).

I had never thought of growing lavender indoors. I do have some in the garden and find that the English lavender does much better than the French, which makes sense I suppose as London is not Provence! However, I really don't think I have enough light inside to grow it. I have tried with rosemary, which likes similar conditions to lavender and it hasn't thrived. I will give it a go though. You never know! I like the idea of leaving little sprigs of lavender on the towels in the guest rooms.

[Sarah977]

@Huma0   I've noticed that many people think the smell of lavender is a universally enjoyed scent. Personally I can't stand the smell. And I somehow I got into a conversation about scents with a guest I had and she said she seriously disliked it as well. I used to attend a yoga class where the instructor walked around the room puttiing a dab of lavendar on everyone's forehead during the end relaxation, where you're lying on your back with eyes closed. She never even asked if that was okay with everyone, assuming that it's appreciated across the board. I had to ask her to please skip me on that.

[Huma0]

@Sarah977 

Yes, that's a very good point. When I mentioned to a friend that I was trying lavender to keep the moths off my cashmere, she said it smelt of 'grannies' and she would prefer the smell of mothballs to that!

Mmm, I wonder if rosemary is a more pleasing smell to most? I used to have a rosemary bush in the garden that was happy for years. I loved using for cooking (and even cocktails) and the smell of freshly picked rosemary roasting in the oven filled the house with a yummy smell. Unfortunately, the Summer before last, it suddenly died for no apparrent reason. Perhaps it was just old. My attempts to grow a new one have failed miserably.

[Sarah977]

@Huma0  Exactly! Smells like grannies, which is what my guest said as well. (I'm a granny now myself, haha) I suspect all our grandmothers had lavender sachets in their drawers.

I do love rosemary. I think scent is such an individual thing- there's probably nothing that smells good to everyone. It's also known that smell, more than any other sense, I think, is associated with memory. All you need is a small whiff of a smell that you associate with something in your past to bring that time or incident up immediately in your mind.

My neighbor's dog rolled around in some horse manure. His wife, who normally attends to keeping the dogs clean, was away, and he's lazy. So instead of bathing the dog, every time the dog came near him he yelled at it to go away, that she smelled bad. I pointed out that the dog had zero idea of why he was mad at her, as she obviously thinks horse manure smells great, or she wouldn't have rolled in it.

I also have a difficult time keeping rosemary alive. It gets too wet and humid here in the summer. I think I'm on my third or fourth rosemary plant by now.

[Huma0]

@Sarah977poor dog! Yep, it's pretty annoying when your pets do something like that but they things have their own logic. One of my cats loves to roll around in flowerbeds and leaves and then come inside just as I've finished mopping the floors. Luckily there is no horse manure in my neck of the woods...

You are right though that smell is such a personal thing. However, there are scents that are pleasing to a large number of people and others that aren't. Estate agents have always advocated freshly brewed coffee or freshly baked bread as the smells to have around your home when you have viewings. I wonder if that is true in reality? 

Another time, I read an article where a bunch of men had been tested to see which scents they found most 'sexy' on a woman. Surprisingly, the winner by a long stretch was cucumber.

[Sarah977]

@Huma0   Well, I have one friend who hates the smell of coffee. But she's the only one I've ever run across with that aversion. So, needless to say, she doesn't drink it, and she also hates beer. She says she just never grew up. Never run across anyone who doesn't like the smell of freash-baked bread, though.

[Ben551]

@Huma0hahahaha well they say you should pick the plant that matches the person, not the other way around.  It's true with pets too! 🙂

I reckon lavendar is a good bet, though as @Sarah977  says not everyone will like every scent.  My wifes grandmother used to make lavendar baggies filled with it, to smell before sleeping, so she and her brother would go to sleep faster when they stayed (bit of an apothecary she was).  It dries well and it grows well if kept in a self watering well where it can draw as much water as it wants to (as in, you water the well not the plant).  I found Kalanchoe the same to be honest - watering the dirt seems to be where I kill things 🙂

[Huma0]

@Ben551that's interesting. I will try that with the lavender. I have killed some from overwatering but also some from underwatering. 

My concern with growing them inside was not enough sunlight, even on the windowsills. The lavender does okay on my sunny terrace or the sunnier spots of my garden, but it does get quite leggy, even if regularly pruned.

I had a couple of large French ones that just looked very sorry for themselves. I gave them to my mother who lives on a hill and has a large, exposed, South facing garden - like a Mediterrean microclimate in South London - and they recovered almost immediately. Now I stick to growing the English varieties.