The accidental hostess

Once upon a time I envisioned myself as the ultimate hostess - not the Martha kind who refinishes her table using old world stains and waxes, hems and embroiders her own linen napkins and then grows her own raspberries for the trifle.

Her table was adorned with fresh flowers from the garden loosely arranged in small crystal vases with a coordinating ribbon winding around the bases.

Now that I could do. I don't have small - or large - crystal vases but I do have small glass ones. And I have flowers in the garden. So I took a pair of clippers, a vase with water in it and set out to hunt down the most spectacular blooms. It is one thing to look at a mass of flowers across the yard and admire the perfection. It is quite another to put them 18 inches from someone's eyes.

Nothing is perfect that close. I took one tour of the yard and looked at the empty vase. Maybe I need to ratchet the "perfect" down a few notches. Another trip around the yard, and I had a decent collection of orange and magenta blooms. The rest had roasted in the dry hot weather or turned to mush in the heavy rains that followed.

I decided on the magenta in the hopes that they would look "artful" in the little vases at each place. A little short of being "artful," I added the orange flowers and rated the total effect just above plastic coverings on the lampshades. I was hoping the ribbon would tie everything together.

I brought out my collection and tried gold ribbon draped around each vase. Then I tried silver and white and copper. Some was narrow and some was wide. I tried mixing them up. I added little glass buttons I got at the craft store. Where is Martha when I need her?

With no time for another jaunt around the yard, I could only hope that my other half's cooking would be the memorable thing about the dinner.

I had read that spraying a tablecloth with water while it is on the table would cause the wrinkles to disappear. That is an overstatement. I think polyester has a place here. With no time or interest in ironing, I ditched the tablecloth and put the little arrangements back on the table.

The mismatched placemats became "eclectic," and the odd lots of napkins made a statement when stuffed into the wine glasses. I turned the lights down low so the dirty windows in the dining room were no longer front and center.

The word "distract" is my byword. Since I didn't have time to vacuum, I put all of the little votives I had bought for a friend's son's rehearsal dinner on the table and lit the candles. The display caught everyone's attention. One neighbor mentioned calling the fire department as she went around blowing them out. But no one noticed the crumbs on the floor.