### Freesia bouquets in Bali: a gift that arrives half finished Most bouquets peak on the doorstep. The box opens, the flowers are at their best, and every day afterwards takes something away from them. Freesia runs the other way round, because the spike opens one bloom at a time from the bottom upwards and the top buds are still shut when the courier hands the box over. The recipient watches the rest of the gift arrive across the following week. That changes how the bunch should be judged before it is bought. Look at the buds rather than at the open flowers. One or two blooms open at the base with a firm row of buds standing above them is exactly right, while a spike already open along most of its length has done the interesting part somewhere else and is being sold at the end of its story rather than the beginning. Buds at the tip tell you how the last few days will go. Green and slightly glassy ones will open in their turn. Buds that have gone papery or browned at the edges will not, and that stretch of the spike simply stays bald while everything below it performs. The length of the spike is worth a word as well. A long spike with a deep row of buds lasts longer than a short one carrying three, and on the first evening the two look almost identical standing in the same glass. Nothing about that is visible in a photograph. Timing is the other half of the decision, and here it matters more than usual. A flower that unfolds slowly suits somebody who is at home to watch it happen, and it suits an occasion you want to stretch out rather than concentrate into one evening. For a dinner in Ubud that needs full effect in two hours, something already open serves better. Who is receiving it decides more than the address does. A guest on a short stay in Seminyak or Nusa Dua will be gone before the top of the spike opens, and half of what was paid for goes with them. Someone living here, in Canggu or Sanur or up in Ubud, gets the whole sequence, and for that recipient this is one of the better value formats we sell. Wrapping stays simple with this flower for a reason. The line of the spike is what is being sold, and paper built up around it hides the exact thing that makes the bunch worth more than its head count suggests. Four things we ask before sending freesia: - How long the recipient is staying. - Whether the flowers are for a particular evening or for the week. - Which room the vase will stand in, since a cool one stretches the sequence and a warm one collapses it. - Whether anyone will pinch off the spent lower blooms. If the honest answer is no, we would suggest a different flower. Seminyak, Canggu and Sanur sit at 90 to 150 minutes, Uluwatu, Tabanan and remote villas take up to 3 or 4 hours, orders run 9 AM to 10 PM, prices start at 650000 IDR, and payment goes through QRIS, GoPay, OVO, DANA or cash to the courier. > "We ask how long the guest is staying before we show freesia at all. Three nights and we send something else, because the best part of this flower has not happened yet by then." > JFLOO florist Above 30 °C the box carries firm wrapping and a cooling element, and between November and March it arrives wet on the outside and wants opening indoors. Neither affects the buds much, since they travel closed and closed is what they should be. The first hour still counts for something. Closed buds travel closed, but a box left standing in a hot car park loses part of the sequence before anybody has seen it. Put the stems in a narrow glass and keep them out of the afternoon sun. From there the flower does its own work, one bloom at a time, for rather longer than most fresh cut stems manage.