### Rose bouquets in Bali: one to two weeks, if somebody is there to open the box The published figure for well kept roses is one to two weeks, and it is honest. It also carries an assumption that nobody mentions at the counter: somebody has to be at home when the flowers arrive, with a vase and five minutes to spare. That assumption is the shaky part on this island. Guests are out from breakfast until dark, villa gates are closed, and a box that waits until the evening has already spent its first hours drying. If the recipient is away for a few days, move the delivery date instead of sending flowers to stand in a hallway. Catalogue orders start at 650000 IDR, and payment goes through QRIS, GoPay, OVO, DANA or cash to the courier. > "We would rather change the date twice than send a box to a gate. Roses do not wait well, and nobody can tell from the photograph how long they waited." > JFLOO florist Timing is easier to agree when the windows are known. Seminyak, Canggu and Sanur sit at 90 to 150 minutes, while Uluwatu, Tabanan and villas further out take up to 3 or 4 hours, and we take orders 9 AM to 10 PM. When a head has already folded over, there is one thing worth trying. Cut that stem again, sharply and higher up than the last cut, then lay the whole flower flat in a basin of cool water for an hour or two so the stem and the head are both submerged. Sometimes the neck takes up water and stiffens again. Often it does not, and then the honest move is to pull the stem out before it spoils the shape of everything around it. The fold itself is an air lock rather than old stock. Air enters the water column while the stem is dry, the head is the furthest point from the cut and the first to be starved, and once the neck has collapsed no feeding sachet brings it back. One to two weeks puts roses at the top of the range for fresh cut stems. That is worth saying out loud when the gift gets compared with a bunch that arrived wide open and was finished by Thursday. The comparison is nearly always with a flower that had already spent half its life on a shelf somewhere. A rose that arrives shut still has all of that ahead of it. So the stage of the bud at the door tells you more about the coming week than the size of the bouquet does. Guard petals cause more worry than they deserve. Those one or two coarse outer petals on each bud protected the flower on the way here. They are supposed to look slightly rough, and peeling them off with a thumbnail reveals a clean bloom underneath. Nobody needs to do it on the doorstep, and doing it too enthusiastically thins a bud that was perfectly good. Three things are worth a look before the courier leaves: - The neck under each head, which should be firm rather than soft. - The cut ends, pale and clean with no dark rim. - The heads themselves, separated in the box and not pressed against a wall. Humidity is not what shortens a rose here. The water in the vase is. It clouds faster in a warm room, and a bunch left standing in the same water for several days sours from the bottom while the heads still look perfectly healthy, so change it every two days and wash the glass while you are at it. Heat and damp change the packing rather than the flower. Above 30 °C the box goes out with firm wrapping and a cooling element against the inner wall, and between November and March it can turn up wet on the outside, which is why it gets opened under a roof and not on an open terrace. Wedding venues in Jimbaran and dinners in Ubud are the orders we ask the most questions about, because both are timed to an hour rather than to a day. For those we agree the hour instead of the window, and we would rather send the courier early than have the box arrive while the guests are already seated. Rose bouquets in Bali travel better than most fresh stems because a tight bud takes a knock without showing it. Imported roses run 60 to 90 cm and Ecuadorian stems reach 120 cm, so tell us the vase you have before we cut anything to fit it.