One of the things that makes me happiest is to pick flowers and bring them in the house. There are many other things that make me ecstatic, serene, joyful, excited, but most other happinesses, such as family, work, hobbies, etc. always have complications attending them. House flowers, on the other hand, are simple and uncomplicated, most of them.

Last night I was rereading a joyous little book called Meditations On Design, by John Wheatman, which consists of 21 thoughts about home design. Idea 11 is “Realize that something special is often very simple.” Next to a photograph of a bowl of roses, Wheatman writes,” A bouquet from a home garden is the most expensive floral arrangement you can have. Masses of blossoms from the florist, whatever you pay for them, could never be as rewarding as the bunch of roses your friend cultivated, fed, watered, and then brought to you.”

Which is why I rarely take roses to friends, they being so difficult to grow, mostly, and as a result, so difficult to give away. On the other hand, annuals and perennials are easy, which makes them easy to share.
 
As Wheatman notes, growing roses good enough to cut for the house is expensive in terms of time, attention and money. An annual cutting garden, by contrast, is easy and cheap. A couple of packets of seeds costing 5 or 6 dollars will give you armloads of flowers to pick lavishly, since the more you pick, the more they produce. A couple of dahlia tubers will provide vibrant bouquets from July until frost. Perennials come back every year (supposedly) and produce flowers in their appointed time. Shrubs are easiest of all.

I went out the other morning to pick flowers and came back with the usual summer suspects-hydrangeas, early blooming chrysanthemums, butterfly bush, dahlias and a few ‘Bright Eyes’ phlox for fragrance. I also cut a lot of zinnias, which are recovering from being sat on by some animal in the parallel universe that is our garden at night.

Then there were the decisions about where they should go. Zinnias to the powder room, hydrangeas in the living room, and the rest in an unruly bouquet for the study. The September issue of  House Beautiful is always the COLOR! issue and I thought I would try putting all the colors on its cover in a vase and see what happened. Sadly, the magazine didn’t photograph as well as the flowers, but they look nice together in person.