I am a big fan of the NYT cooking section, and especially the weekly email by editor Sam Sifton. It is mostly about cooking, but often about other things. Lots of reading suggestions, music, and discussions about fishing. He had some shopping advice in today’s email:
Good morning. I took a walk through the flower district of Manhattan the other day, West 28th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. The sidewalk was impossibly crowded with people and plants and cuttings. A seller picked up a pot of grass by its leaves and the pot dropped to the ground, revealing its roots. His colleague pointed this out. “Lost his shoes,” he said.
The air was fragrant — peonies, gardenias, frangipani — and I realized that I hadn’t smelled those scents in months. The past few months have been a perfume of roasting meats, snuffed-out candles, Earl Grey tea. It’s time to change that. Whatever you cook today, whatever you cook this week, add some flowers to your shopping list. Crowd your countertops with vases. Inhale deeply with your nose. Force the season.