Lilac Time

It's lilac time in New York! I love this time of year as it heralds spring in full bloom, but it is so short. Bursts of purple appear all over the city - like above at my lovely Northern Spy Food Co. where the anesthetist and I have a yummy breakfast on the way out to the boat - and all over Central Park.

Lilac has different connotations for me. Before coming here, whenever I thought about lilac I thought of the color of old ladies' hair after a bad dye job, and the name alone conjured up moth balls and mustiness. I think it's because I never remember the flower being readily available in Sydney or Melbourne - although my lovely friend from my peartree house may tell me otherwise on that one!

But here, come spring, before the blue hydrangeas of summer appear, it's all about lilac and cherry blossom. The Union Square farmers market positively bulges with lilac. One florist specializes in lilac and he unloads from his enormous truck wonderful shades of purple, as eager shoppers wait restlessly. Imagine what his fields must look like! Heaven, So now, I love this flower and this color. I even have beautiful lilac-colored linen sheets form Libeco Lagae.

My new found love for this flower also led me to a very famous poem by Walt Whitman. He wrote it as an elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated during the lilac season:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,

And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,

I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever returning spring.....

The poem continues for another 16 verses so I will let you explore it on your own. In the meantime, don't forget to look out for this beautiful flower when it's springtime in your part of the world.

images: (1-3) mine, (4) libeco, (5-6) 29 blackstreet

Be My Valentine

I'm a bah humbug when it comes to celebrating Valentine's Day - commercialism at its worst, marketing gone overboard, that sort of thing - and there is nothing worse than receiving an anonymous bunch of long-stemmed, red, hothouse roses that have absolutely no smell at all and die after 24 hours! (Actually, that's probably a good thing.)

In saying that, I adore flowers in general, so I thought I would take this calendar moment to share my favorite florists in this city:

First up is a nod to fellow aussie Antony Todd. Predominantly known now for his interiors and event planning (try Elton John's Oscar party and the UN's 50th anniversary party) Todd was originally known as a florist. He can still count Martha (Stewart) and P. Diddy as fans for his beautifully simple if not very structured arrangements.

If you prefer something more wistful and natural, you will adore Jessie Weidinger's arrangements from Rountree Flowers.  She does the most awesome table decorations for Karen Mordechai's Sunday Suppers, one of my fave blogs and desperate-to-be-at dinners. I love the way she mixes florals with fruit and creates a nostalgic wildflower kind of feel.

For a more extravagant impact, we use ZeZe Flowers for all our work dinners and functions. ZeZe is a larger than life Brazilian who began life on a Rio stage. He favors bright colors and orchids and is the darling of the UES social set, who regularly use him for their charity galas. ZeZe recently opened a heavenly cafe on the Upper East Eide, where you can nibble on pastries and breathe in the intoxicating scent of lilies, hyacinth and freesias.

On a more local level, I have VSF (Very Special Flowers) around the corner from home. Apart from personifying your typical West Village boutique store, VSF is famous for fabulous arrangements combining "unusual" blooms.

Over in funky Williamsburg, you can't help but enter Sprout Home when you pass it. The way they arrange the flowers so simply at the front of the store just makes me want to pick a bunch immediately. And without the pretense or high prices!

If party planners and sometimes overpriced store fronts are not your "thang", there is always the Chelsea flower market which runs for two blocks at 28th St and 6th Ave. There are endless warehouses full of dried flowers, silk flowers, enormous blossom boughs (perfect for those cavernous Tribeca warehouse spaces), indoor plants and freshly cut flowers of all colors and types.

Or, if you want to pride yourself on a small carbon footprint, try the greenmarkets. My local is at Union Square. Every Saturday I wander up to choose my blooms from a nearby grower who tootles in from Jersey or Hudson Valley and sells their seasonal florals from buckets out of the back of a truck. Now that is quite authentic for this town.
Happy Valentine's Day x

Images: Antony Todd, Karen Mordechai @ Sunday Suppers, Rountree Flowers, New York social diary, David Fratianne, nyc loves nyc, nymag, disdressed, wedding aces, mine