GREEN ZEBRAS AND BLUE BOTTLES

OMG!!

So I was walking through the office, and I noticed that there was a shift in a matrix. I had to stop and look again, just to be sure, Mr. Anderson.

And there they were : Variegated ....GREEN ...Ranunculas!

Oh yes, (with apologies to Seinfeld) - they are natural and they are spectacular!

So, as an epilogue to a recent post about "Butterflies and Zebras", I hope that you can enjoy these de-licious and de-lovely flowers.

To order go here - Availability: Very limited

STINKING BISHOP

This summer I visited London and Edinburgh in the British Isles with my girlfriend. We had a wonderful time and were able to get to visit many of "pre-trip must-do's" including the awesome British Museum, Gordon Ramsay's and a couple of musicals, noteworthy  of these was "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" on stage. Personally I have never been one for musicals but I have to admit that this was pretty good!  A complete "Fail" was a much anticipated visit to the Chelsea Flower Show, which needs tickets pre-booked months in advance: They take their flowers and plants seriously in England! On the other hand we elected to go to a candle-lit performance of several chorale pieces at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields complete with orchestra which was very spiritually uplifting.

We made a couple of other pilgrimages; one being to the Doctor Maartens (DM's) store in Covent Garden, home of the legendary boots with the patented air-cushion soles, which in my youth were referred to as "Bovver Boots" - as in "Do you want a spot of bovver  (bother)?"; the other being a visit to the home of "Neals' Yard", a quintessential English cheese shop.

This cheese shop is one of many examples in London and throughout Europe of shops dedicated to one item. The focus and knowledge is consequently much more profound and the enthusiasm of the staff is palpable even before any words are exchanged. In my opinion one of the distinct downsides of the proliferation of a virtual world on the Internet is the inexorable elimination of these highly focused businesses from the real world.

Fortunately for us, we were able to experience this wonderful shop, to inhale the aromas, to feast our eyes and to taste the wares. There is simply nothing that equals this experience; an environment that so  physically exerts its existence in the tactile and sensory world. And yet certainly it is all but disappeared in the USA, with just a few exceptions in New York and perhaps a few other major urban centers.

For want of a better example, just think about most floral businesses today: With few exceptions, there are no charismatic spaces full of flowers that wow the olfactory and visual senses. Far too many fabulous flowers, great designs and floral decorations are only seen at weddings, on designers' websites or at flower schools that seem to be popping up. For better or for worse, however, that is the way things are today, although as with all things this state is temporal and will change, as flowers are far to wonderful and wondrous to remain the exclusive province of  weddings and events.

Notwithstanding the above, my girlfriend and I got to enjoy this fabulous emporium and appreciate it for the time we were there, in person, up close and also later on enjoy it all over again in our mouths! The Cheese.

That's another thing , by the way, is how wonderfully mature and ripe the cheeses are, with fully developed flavors and sharp, edgy accents impregnated into the deep, creamy textures.

It is so important to allow products such as cheese, beef, and even flowers to mature and age to a point where they impart the full flavors, colors, scents and afford sentient beings the best visual experience.

Which is, of course, how one gets to enjoy the perverse pleasures of a cheese called the "Stinking Bishop". Amen!

ROSE PORN

Have you noticed lately on television advertisements they will refer to food using a noun as an adjective in a very annoying way? For instance there is an ad for Italian meal in a box, I think, that proclaims that it is "Restaurant Quality". Of course that begs the question; "What kind of restaurant are they alluding to?" Perhaps a commercial that is less ambiguous is the one that proclaims a foodstuff to be "Sit-Down Quality". I guess that rules out all those meals that you have to eat standing up like a Pinks Chili-Cheese Dog or a Philly Cheese Steak Wit'.  In a really incorrigible abuse of the English language, not only does the noun become an adjective, but the noun becomes almost superfluous and meaningless. But hey, if its good enough for Madison Avenue its good enough for me.

Being the philistine that I am, I have latched on to Porn; as in Food Porn, and feel the urge to provide you with some Rose Porn. See - its that easy to turn a noun into an adjective!

There is a fabulous new rose with a somewhat limited availability that we call  "Charity", which is a deliciously feminine pink hue with a fully double rosette. "Upskirting a ballerina in a tutu" provides a pale metaphor of the wonderful  ruffled beauty of this rose, which is why the pictures are so necessary and illuminating. Charity does grow with some green calyceous growth in the center, which seems to be very fashionable at the moment, but not for everyone.. It has a strong resemblance to one of the classic garden roses of all time, the R. 'Fantin-Latour' a seminal rose in the history of flowers, but like many of the new generation of garden roses from David Austin developed for cutting, it has a vastly superior vase life than the famous Fantin-Latour. As if this is not enough, "Charity" also has a delightful light but lingering perfume altogether reminiscent of Yardley's English Lavender soap, and all in all, is an absolutely wonderful flower.

David Austin Roses, the breeder of this rose does not like it at all, due largely to the green protuberance in the center and will not be developing it for the cut flower market. Which seems to me to be rather a shame, as it is a modern masterpiece. We have an exclusive but limited supply of this rose, and I encourage to you to order it while still available.

And hey, if you don't like the green cayceous material showing, you can do what I did in the last image and cut it off with some scissors.

BUTTERFLIES AND ZEBRAS

"Butterflies and Zebras, and Moonbeams and Fairy Tales"....so go the words to the classic Hendrix lament "Little Wing".

Perhaps whomsoever coined the name for this variety was not only aware of the old commercial hybrid tea rose called "Zebra", the first rose that was streak'd with vertical daubs of color in a popular combination of hot pink and white, and but also the song from "Axis: Bold as Love".  Or maybe it is just a fanciful coincidence.

Zebra was quickly followed by "Henri Matisse", also an hot pink/white combination, and more recently the Intuition series from French rose breeders Delbard, the latest of which is the "Orange Intuition". However, "Butterfly" seems to be in a league above these other varieties, especially as the color combination is so appealing, but more significantly because this rose opens, revealing the wonderful variegation for all the world to see.

Intriguing new rose, with limited supply, we think Butterfly will be very popular for autumn collections.

Eye Candy

Here in Miami we rarely see the wonderful items that they get in California, as we are mostly involved with the importation of flowers from South America. However this week we received our first shipment of Viburnum from Wisconsin. Of course, at this time of year it is not the fabulous :Guelder Rose" or Snowballs, with their generous spherical flower heads, but it is  from the same family. Whereas the Guelder Rose, aka V. opulus 'Sterile' is in fact sterile and produces no fruits, its cousin V. opulus 'Compacta' is loaded with glossy, vitreous berries of dark and strawberry red. Great item for fall arrangements or just massed on its own.

Eye candy for florists!

If you feel the need to indulge please contact the

Mayesh Shipping Department here

MILKY WAY

On Wednesday nights there is a show on Discovery Channel that we love to watch, featuring an ultra-nerd who is very cool; one Professor Brian Cox. He is the emccee on a terrific show called "Wonders of the Solar System", which lays out how really magnificent and interrelated the whole universe is. Each week he takes us up to the skies and beyond and demonstrates a different aspect of the solar system by relating it to geographical features on planet earth. Brian Cox also happens to be a secular humanist, which is what I consider myself to be, so that is also very cool. We are not alone.

Milky Way is a new rose which is a very pale cream, almost white, but not; if you know what I mean. It has a slight hue of a peachy-pink, very similar to Vendela. However there is good news and bad news...Good news first. The flowers open up lavishly, oftne with double and triple hearts, whorling like eddies in a river. The overall effect is one of massed balls of silk brocade or fine damask. Exquisite.

The bad news is that after a few days some of the petals get bubbly and seem dry, much like Rosita Vendela does, or on occasion Vendela. It seems to be a genetic feature. Sort of  ashame, but if they were used for wedding work the effects will be breathtaking.

2010; A ROSE ODYSSEY; FROM GREENHOUSE TO FLORAL STUDIO; Part Two

 

And here is Esperanza, almost two acres of this special rose! The quality and consistency manifested in this shot clearly demonstrates the influence of tender, loving care, as well as good management in concert with the technology and steps described above. Now we just have to get them to market. This really is a labor of love.

The roses are harvested individually, one by one, and are set at the end of the rows in a plastic mesh. These plastic meshes containing the roses are rolled up and transported by mono-rail to the post-harvest facility. Understandably, with a plantation covering some 24 acres, carrying the roses to the processing center requires a method such as this that will not stress the flowers, nor unduly compromise the employees’ ability to deliver the roses in the best of condition. These monorails run the length and breadth of the farm, all terminating at the central warehouse.At the post-harvest warehouse, the roses are unloaded from carts and placed in the receiving tank while the varieties are prioritized for processing. This tank will normally contain a solution with a fungicide and/or a bactericide. The roses are then placed into large buckets of water, and taken into post-harvest, ready for grading. The post-harvest center comprises a long room with a conveyor belt running down the center. On one side are the stations of the personnel who bunch the roses. Positioned next to them is an associate who grades the flowers. The grading is done with a variety of parameters in mind.

Firstly, all roses that are not of export quality are immediately remaindered, and set aside for the domestic market. Then the stem lengths are measured and placed on a rack ready to be bunched. Simultaneously, the grader assesses the cutting point as suitable for one of three markets.

The very open roses are selected for Russia, the ones with a medium aperture set aside for the United States, and the tightest blooms allocated to Europe.

Mayesh Wholesale is of the opinion that new roses with high petal counts, such as Esperanza, actually benefit from being cut more open. The color is richer, the petal structure better developed, the head size appreciably larger and the overall performance is superior.

The people making the bunches select stems from the rack, again with a particular marketplace in mind. Russia and Europe are packed in bunches of twenty, and for the USA and Canada in bunches of twenty-five. Note the mirror in the picture, placed so that the individual can closely monitor the uniformity of the bunch.

The completed bunch will have a label affixed to the wrapper that indicates name of variety, stem length and number of stems in the bunch. This data is also encrypted in barcode form on the same label. Then the rose is placed on the conveyor belt and travels to the post-harvest inventory.

At the end of the conveyor belt, the roses are collected, the labels scanned by a bar-code gun and then the freshly made bunches are placed into buckets of water, arranged in the warehouse by geographical destination. Technologies such as bar-codes greatly assist the grower as the available inventory is being updated immediately upon completion of each bunch. In the fast paced world of fresh flowers, this is extremely valuable, as sales can start promptly thereafter.

The buckets of roses are then placed in coolers where they will hydrate for 24 hours, before being packed into boxes ready for their journey to a destination thousands of miles away. The roses must hydrate for a minimum of 8 hours, and the general practice in Ecuador is to leave them overnight. Without proper hydration in a professional solution, the roses will not be stable enough to survive the trip. Any advertisement that claims to deliver roses from Ecuador one day after cutting is guilty of making false representations. All roses from Ecuador destined for Mayesh Wholesale are flown exclusively on UPS Air Cargo. Although they are somewhat more expensive than other carriers, they are the only airline out of Colombia and Ecuador that offer a scheduled service that is adhered to. UPS is consistently reliable, and thus a program of just in time shipments can be coordinated. As you can imagine for fresh flowers, and roses in particular, this rapid transfer of cargo from cooler to cooler is essential.

In Miami the freight is received by our logistics company, where it is pre-cooled, sorted, and loaded onto temperature controlled trailers. These trailers are contracted through various refrigerated trucking specialists, to expedite their movement from Miami to Los Angeles. The journey is 48 hours, and the trucks run virtually non-stop, driven by two-man teams. The temperature is maintained at a constant 34 degrees, and during the trip the roses are exposed to an ethylene inhibitor call “Ethyl-Bloc”. This product slows down the transpiration rate of the flowers, and significantly lowers the ability of the roses to generate ethylene.

Upon arrival in Los Angeles, the roses are distributed to our various locations, and ultimately are sold to you, the customer. And so, this Odyssey of the Esperanza, this journey of Hope is almost to its conclusion. And yet, incredibly the new form the roses take, at the end of their life, whether as a wedding bouquet or as a “Thank You” gift, they give new life, they inspire dreams, and they renew hope.

So the next time you adjust the blooms, rotate a rose into position, turn another to its best aspect, and conclude the assembly of a bridal bouquet, pause to contemplate all the dreams that the bouquet represents, not only the ones of the person who will carry it, but also the ones of the people who grew it.

For to be without love is a terrible thing,

But to be without hope is to be dead.

End

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Renato Teran, and the entire team of Agricola El Rosario located at the Hacienda Ortuno. The roses are marketed under the name of AgriRose.

Many thanks to DeRuiters Neuwe Rosen for creating Esperanza