Five Love Potions

1.

5 ingredients:

– A bouquet of pink ranunculus

– Eight star anise pods

– Vivaldi’s Summer

– A thimble full of honey

– Two perfect martinis

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2.

Only 3 ingredients – A Fiftieth Anniversary, the love is already profoundly strong.

– One bouquet of a dozen red roses

– A well read, well loved copy of Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. An odd ingredient one might think, but a thing treasured by this couple.

– The Classic Movie, It Happened One Night, starring Clark Gable, and Claudette Colbert

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3.

4 ingredients, this one for a pair of lovers reunited after ten years foolishly spent apart.

– Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2

– Two perfectly made Bee’s Knees

– A red velvet gown, first worn twenty five years ago, that still fits the soon to be (again) Fiona Baker Welles.

– A vintage copy of The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

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4.

6 ingredients, a young couple, both twenty five. May their love and attraction stay strong through the years.

– A year abroad together in Florence, Italy to study art and each other

– An antique sapphire and diamond necklace

– A black sweater knitted by Kristen for husband, Enzo. May it wear well, not shrink, get lost or stained with wine.

– Three teaspoons of nutmeg, one of cinnamon, two of sugar. Okay, three ingredients in one, but they’re relatively young, and need to build up resistance to temptation so as to make it last.

– A copy of Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen

– One bowl of pistachio gelato and two spoons for sharing.

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5.

4 Ingredients

– Four young fir trees. May they grow tall and strong

– Handel’s Water Music

– One tuxedo for him, one blue silk gown for her, for a special night at the opera, and a black tie after party.

– Herb Alpert’s Love Potion No. 9 for the after-after party at home.