Fiori Freschi (Fresh Flowers)

So we are hosting a get together at our house tonight for all the Americans and a General and his staff who are visiting from Turkey. We are looking forward to spending time with him and his staff but other than that I really haven't thought much about the General being here. I love hosting things and I'm not one to serve frozen pizza pockets anyway so I was just going about planning our event as if it were any other.

I wanted flowers for the table and couldn't find my guy that sells flowers out of his truck anywhere in town. Will and I walked and walked looking for him but ended up at the florist. My flower guy sells 10 stems of lilies for 10 Euros. You can't beat that price. Of course the florist was more expensive so I decided against a centerpiece and settled on just three stems of lilies because I can be rather, um, frugal. The florist spoke no English but I did just fine. (Except when I attemped to ask her if she was married to the guy who owns the bicycle shop and I ended up asking saying "sposata to una bicicletta?" "Are you married to a bicycle?")

I walked out of the shop with my three flowers and immediately saw a huge commotion across the street at the 5 star hotel. At first I thought a swat team was there. There were a bunch of carbineri (the super duper Italian police), unmarked cars, a big van and all these official people in uniform. Honestly, I have never seen anything like this in my life. It was like something out of a movie. After a few moments, I saw him. It was not a swat team. It was the arrival of the General who will be at my house tonight. You would have thought it was the president.

As I realized this, I thought three bad words and promptly turned the stroller around and headed back to the florist to buy that centerpiece. Of course, I didn't have the words in Italian to say "excuse me, I've changed my mind and need more." I just had to ask for the flowers like I wasn't there 3 minutes before. The florist looked at me like I had three heads but she did give me a 10 Euro discount.

My original 3 stems. I love to put them in wine bottles and set them on these oddly placed shelves in one of our halls.

And the "on second thought. . ." centerpiece. I love the simple elegant look of just lilies.