#### Season decides what is on the counter
Peonies get one short window a year wherever they are grown, and outside it every flower on every counter has travelled to get there. What reaches Dubai outside the season comes in from Holland, cut tight and cooled for the journey. Those stems begin their vase life a step behind. The first days go on opening, which is time the flower does not spend looking its best, and a bunch ordered for a Thursday evening in December wants to be in the flat by Tuesday. Ants are the other thing worth mentioning before someone panics in a kitchen. They are normal on garden grown stems, they come for the nectar on the outside of the bud, and they damage nothing. A shake outdoors before the bouquet comes in deals with them. In season the same flower is a different purchase altogether. Stems arrive bigger and softer, often with a crack of colour already showing at the top, and they open in water almost immediately. That is the one stretch of the year when a large armful of peonies stops being a separate line in the budget. #### Who these actually suit
An open peony is a different flower from the one that arrived. The head roughly triples in width, so a bunch that looked modest in wrapping will crowd its vase by midweek and either needs a wider container or a few stems taken out. Petals shed at the end rather than the head slumping, and they shed all at once, usually across a single afternoon. Put the vase somewhere you do not mind sweeping. The scent arrives on the same schedule. It is faint while the bud is closed and turns up properly once the flower opens, sweeter and lighter in the pale varieties, heavier in the deep pink ones. All of which points at one kind of recipient. Peony bouquets in Dubai work for someone who will be in the same room as them for a week. Three things settle the order:
- The date the flowers should be open, which is not the date the box should arrive. - The room, since a vent above the table slows everything down. - The length of the stay, because a guest leaving in two days sees the closed version and nothing else. 
That last one shapes a lot of what we send. Hotel guests in Downtown, Marina and Palm Jumeirah are often here for a few nights, and a tight Dutch bud handed over on the last evening is a poor gift no matter how good the stems are. Home addresses suit the flower better, and so do the quiet weeks between travel. A desk in DIFC fails the same test for its own reason. A bud that needs most of a week has nobody looking after it from Friday, and the flower that opens on an empty floor opens for no one. For a hotel delivery, send the check in date and the length of the stay. We time the box against the stay and put the bud stage in writing before anything leaves the workroom.