Friday, July 02, 2010

My kangaroo paw


Last Saturday, a friend and I walked through a refrigerator of flowers searching for just the right combo of colors and shapes and sizes for my wedding bouquet. It was a daunting task filled with too many options, so I was happy to have my friend, who has done this before, along.

The process: You pick out the flowers. Flower woman orders them wholesale. You pick up the flowers, and then lucky friends and family help you make your own bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres. (Because who really wants the easy route where a florist does all the work for you?!)

After an hour or so of talking with the flower woman and mixing and matching various flowers and plants, we found a combination that we thought was really good. The flower lady held up the bunch, and we liked. But these funky, fuzzy yellow things had caught my eye in the fridge earlier, so I asked about ‘em.

"Oh, the kangaroo paws?" flower woman asked.

"Uh, yes. Those paws," I said.

She went and grabbed a stalk of the paws from the fridge and put it into our bunch and suddenly...music and bright shining light...the ensemble was complete. The paws finished our floral masterpiece.

Kangaroo paws are bright (sometimes red, sometimes yellow) and velvety and sturdy, which apparently makes them great natural perches for birds. And, as you may have guessed, they’re native to Australia, but are now commercially grown in Israel and Cali too.

The stalks of the paws were pretty expensive compared to everything else, but I decided the bouquets needed them. Much like I need BJ. He's my kangaroo paw in life's bouquet.

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