One of the really nice things about living in the Netherlands is the abundance of cheap, high quality cut flowers you can buy. Since we've returned from Singapore I've kept the house filled with fresh flowers, welcome splashes of natural colour to counteract the austere shades of winter outside. 
Dutch flowers are amazing. The variety of blooms is staggering, and every supermarket sells a selection of mixed or single variety bunches for prices that seem absurdly low after living in the tropics. If you visit the weekly market it's possible to get your flowers even cheaper, and ditto if I buy them from the friendly greengrocer who parks his truck in our street every Friday morning to flog his fresh produce. Who could resist bunches of gorgeous pink and green roses for just three euros a dozen? They would cost five times as much in Singapore, if you could even find them.
Great heavy heads of hyacinth which exude enough heady perfume to scent the entire lounge are the same price, and even the fancy bouquets rarely top 5-6 euros. In Singapore we would have paid at least 30 euros for a dozen roses, and then they would only last a couple of days in the humidity.
Flowers I don't even recognise, cut the day before from the greenhouses which fill the west of the country and then whisked to the auctions that morning tempt me with their exotic looks, yet even then I'd be hard pressed to pay more than 5 euros a bunch. This is definitely one of the perks of living here.
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