### Mimosa bouquets in Bali: read the branch before you unwrap it Mimosa dries out faster than almost anything else in the cooler, and it does so whether you want it to or not. The thin branch loses water across its whole surface, leaves included, and in warm air the balls tighten within hours. That is why the bunch travels wrapped in film or paper. What we sell as mimosa is a branch of acacia rather than a single flower on a stem. Tiny pompoms run along its whole length, narrow feathery leaves sit between them, and an armful of it weighs almost nothing while presenting an enormous amount of surface to the air. Unwrap it at the address and the condition reads immediately. Fresh mimosa springs back, the balls are firm and do not shed pollen at a touch, and the branch bends without snapping. Over dried stock gives itself away by the shower of loose balls at the bottom of the bag and by a colour that has slipped towards grey yellow. Check both of those while the courier is still standing there. An over dried armful still passes for acceptable about a day, which is long enough for whoever received it to assume nothing was wrong until the branches are on the floor. > "We keep mimosa wrapped right up to the handover. Every hour it spends open on a counter is an hour the recipient does not get." > JFLOO florist Re-cut the woody ends, split them a couple of centimetres with a knife, and put the branches in water straight away, before the evening gets away from you. In water a fresh bunch holds for a few days before the balls begin to drop at the slightest movement. #### Where the vase goes matters more than the water Moving warm air is what finishes this flower, not a shortage of water in the vase, and that single fact decides the placement. Keep the branches away from an air conditioning outlet, away from a ceiling fan, and out of direct sun. An open terrace is the least obvious mistake. The air there is better in every ordinary sense and worse for mimosa, because a fan running above the table dries a branch faster than a closed room ever would. Somewhere back from the doors, out of the draught, is where an armful of this lasts longest. Fussing with the water level does less than people expect. What dries the branch is the air around it, so shifting the vase back from the terrace achieves more than any amount of topping up. #### Getting it there Seminyak, Canggu and Sanur sit in a 90 to 150 minute window, while Uluwatu, Tabanan and remote villas run up to 3 to 4 hours. Above 30 °C and in high humidity we use firm wrapping and a cooling element, and for mimosa the wrapping is the part that counts, since humidity is one of the few local conditions this branch actually benefits from. During the rainy season from November to March the far addresses go out in the morning. Delivery runs 9 AM to 10 PM, orders start from 650000 IDR, and payment goes through QRIS, GoPay, OVO, DANA or cash to the courier. Villas in Seminyak, Canggu and Berawa take most of these orders, with Nusa Dua hotels and dinners in Ubud behind them. For a hotel room we ask reception not to open the wrapping, since a bunch left unwrapped on a luggage trolley for an afternoon arrives in a different condition from the one that left us. Ask the courier to hand it over rather than leave it at a gate if nobody is home. Mimosa is the one format where a box waiting in the sun for an hour is not a small matter, and a villa gate in the middle of the day is exactly that.