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Oak Leaves and Cosmos
WHEN oak leaves begin to glow with tawny splendor, another girl celebrated her wedding. The house was a bower of rich, deep red and brown foliage, and the "bridey" touch came in with the pale pink garden cosmos that was used.
Cosmos made the background for the wedding group, and was arranged in feathery masses wherever it might contrast with the dark oak leaves.
The wedding was in the late afternoon, and after the sunset light had faded the pink [160] candles began to glow rosily under soft pink shades.
The dining-room table was lovely with pink candle-light and pink cosmos as a centerpiece on a mat of oak leaves. There were pink and white candies and raspberry ice was served with the tiniest of pink and white and green petites fours. [161]
Two paragraphs on an autumn wedding, and what they amount to is a colour scheme: deep red and brown oak foliage, pale pink garden cosmos, pink candles, pink ice.
- Cosmos is a garden flower, not a florist’s oneIt is an annual that goes on flowering until the first frost, which is exactly why it is on this table, and it wilts within hours of being cut. Cut it early in the morning, put it straight into deep water, and arrange it as late as you can.
- Oak leavesBranches cut while the leaves are turning will curl and drop as they dry, and this room has to hold through an afternoon and an evening. Take them a little before full colour and keep the stems in water; the standing trick for foliage that must last is to stand the cut stems in a glycerine solution for a week beforehand, which keeps them supple at the cost of some of the colour.
- Raspberry iceA water ice — raspberry purée, sugar syrup, lemon, no dairy at all. It is the easiest frozen dessert there is, it does not split or curdle, and it suits a late-afternoon reception because it is sharp rather than rich.
- Petits foursSmall iced cakes cut from a sheet of sponge and trimmed square. Made at home the cutting matters more than the baking: chill or briefly freeze the iced sheet before cutting, and the edges come away clean instead of dragging.
- Candles under shadesThe effect the page is after — pink light coming up as the sunset fades — was got with open flames inside soft paper shades. That is the one genuinely dangerous piece of period table decoration, and a shaded bulb or a candle inside glass reaches the same light without it.
This chapter treats a wedding as a decorating problem with a palette, and the palette is whatever happens to be in the garden in the week in question. The page before it is a blue and gold wedding; the one after is a Christmas wedding; this one is built on oak leaves and cosmos because the bride married when the oaks were turning. What makes that possible is that nothing in the scheme is shipped. Garden cosmos, foliage cut from the trees nearby, candles, pink candies and a raspberry ice: a hostess with a garden and a kitchen could produce the whole effect herself, and the book assumes she will. The one thing she could not command was the light, which is why the page is so careful to note the hour — late afternoon, the sunset fading, and the pink candles coming up under their shades as the room darkens.