Just forget that Christmas arrangement

Around my thirteenth, I thought I had enough of that hanging around on the weekends. I had a paper route in my name, in the summer I peeled tulip bulbs, and now I had to get a job in a store. You can start early enough, I thought. Of course, it wasn't really allowed by law, but there was nothing wrong with my work ethic. Let's just leave it at that.

A flower shop it became. On Beijerlandselaan in Rotterdam-South. Every Saturday morning, I took the bus towards the city to be among the flowers and plants. I learned to make huge bouquets, knew that you had to give the ivy with fresh green leaves more water and light, and fiddled with the dead leaves of the petunia (the latter was my least favorite task). In winter, it was so cold that I froze to the ground with pot chrysanthemums or Christmas trees. And at Christmas, my hands still itched from the resin of the Christmas tree, so many went over the counter. I enjoyed it. This former career ensures that I never buy a complete bouquet anymore, but always get loose flowers to make something myself.

I found those quaint little Christmas arrangements or (even worse) red poinsettias in December terrible, but there was one flower I looked forward to in the summer: the amaryllis. That large flower you can gaze at for days and seems to get a little more beautiful every hour. In white or in red, it just depends on what your favorite is. My grandma, mother, aunt, or whoever seemed to have a birthday, has never received anything that looked like a Christmas arrangement from me since that flower shop. I prefer to give them amaryllises, and myself too, by the way. Just unwrapping them is a celebration, as they come one by one in luxurious foil.

Let me give you a little tip. If you cut the bottom of the stem a little (it really only needs to be half a centimeter), the stem curls gracefully in the vase. Not only do you have a beautiful specimen above water, but something particularly artistic can also be seen in the water.

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