Jade Rose

If you read my red rose rant, you know that red roses are not my favorite flower. That does not mean that I am totally against all roses. I prefer colored roses: lavender, hot pink, even white. There is nothing like showing someone a colored rose when they have come into the shop thinking that red roses are the way to go. I like watching their face light up when they realize the other fabulous possibilities. Such was the case yesterday when I had an elderly gentleman come into the shop to buy flowers for his wife's 90th birthday! When I asked him what his wife's favorite color was he said green, and then he quickly added that he knew that limited the possibilities for flowers. "Not so", I said, and I went to the cooler! Luckily, we had a nice assortment of "green" flowers: green hydrangeas, green-tinted spider mums and little button daisies as well as some jade roses. His face lit up when he saw those light green roses! He talked about how unusual they are and how his wife would absolutely love them! I love it when I am able to have those serendipitous moments at the shop, and quite frankly who knows how many more birthdays that woman will have, so hopefully they will make quite an impression for her.

One of my favorite books is Voltaire's "Candide". At the conclusion of the book Candide meets a man who seems very happy. Candide asks him the secret to leading a happy life. The man tells him that he lives a very simple life and spends his time cultivating his garden. This in turn makes his family happy. I couldn't help but think of the old man buying flowers for his wife. It's a simple thing really, and yet it will make her very happy. Flowers have that power. They don't always have to be the most elaborate thing, and yet they can make a person smile. They can make a lasting memory. So, take the time to cultivate your garden and in the process make someone happy!

Sweet Sunflower

Several years ago, I spent some time in the south of France. They grow a tremendous amount of flowers there for the perfume business as well as the flower trade. There were acres and acres of farms with bushes of sweet-smelling lavender glowing violet in the noonday sun. But, it was the miles and miles of blossoming sunflowers that really caught my attention. Sunflowers have a sort of primeval look to them.Standing over five and six feet tall, these mammoth flowers that follow the sun through the day have such a fragile look to them. I never imagined that there was such a need for these fantastic flowers. The meaning behind the sunflower is loyalty and constancy. The sun motif is so appropriate for summer flower arrangements. They always make an arrangement look larger than life! Not everyone is happy having the sunflower in their arrangement though. They are one of those flowers that some people relegate to the garden. They don't think that they are fancy enough for an arrangement. The nice thing about the the sunflower is that they do come in several sizes which make them appropriate for almost any occasion.

One of my big jobs at the flower shop is waiting on customers. There is nothing that I like better than to help someone pick out an arrangement especially for the young men that come into the shop. I say that because usually they have no idea what they want. They might come in wanting roses because that is all they know, but if I can get them past that, then I know that it is time to open the flower cooler and let them see all of the fabulous choices. It is always such an eye-opening experience for them and usually a good one! I always think that an arrangement with many different flower types is better than an arrangement of just one flower type. And I feel that I have done my job well when I can get a young man excited about flowers!

White Stock

A symbol of a happy life and contented existence, stock is one of those flowers that people always ask about. The purpose of stock in any flower arrangement is to fill out the arrangement and give it a beautiful smell. It is not a flower that most people would ever ask for by name, although a couple of summers ago, there was a woman who came into the shop every week to buy a few stalks of stock. That's all she wanted, no fern, no filler of any kind, just two stalks of stock. She said she kept a small vase on her table just for that. Stock has a delicate yet heady scent, but I don't think that most people really consider them to be a a gorgeous flower, they always looked a little rumpled, but oh that smell! So many flowers these days have been bred for their looks and along the way have lost a lot of their scent. Red roses are a great example of that. Yes, they do still have some rose scent left, but it has been degraded to a secondary status in favor of look and a longer-lasting flower.

Yesterday, I wrote about cleaning flowers. That is the closest that I ever get to the actual flowers. My job is selling. I answer the phones, and wait on customers. Sure, I get to hand the flowers off to customers, but I never get to actually make any of the arrangements. That is until this week. I had a customer come in to order his wife an arrangement for their anniversary. He said she told him that she likes wildflowers, and that he wanted to play a trick on her. He picked out a beautiful arrangement with sunflowers. I knew I liked him right away because he didn't go for the typical anniversary rose arrangement. Anyway, he said he wanted to bring in a vase filled with some weeds to have us deliver first to his wife and then come back and present her with the real arrangement. He wrote out a card with something to the effect of, "you said you liked wildflowers...!" for the weedy arrangement, and then a "gotcha" card for the real arrangement. So he came back the day before the delivery, but instead of having made the arrangement himself, he brought in a huge bunch in one hand and the vase in the other. Needless to say no self-respecting designer wanted to touch that one so I was allowed to put the joke arrangement together. Now I have spent the last five summers working at the shop, and I have watched our designers put together countless arrangements, so I think that I have a decent idea of how to kind of put together an arrangement. I don't. Not that I had quality flowers to work with, the best flower in the bunch was some Queen Anne's Lace, but still you would think that I could half-ass it. It was pretty bad, and I could hear the designers chuckling as they watched me sweat over this thing. I did give it my best shot, but now I know for sure that I need to leave the arranging to the professionals! The driver delivered the flowers and they had the affect that the guy wanted. He said that when he came back in to give the woman the real arrangement that their were five or six ladies standing around her talking about how horrible and possibly dead my arrangement was! I never heard back from her husband. I hope they have a happy life and contented existence!

Blue Delphinium

So, today is Friday, but a florist's work is never done. The shop is open on Saturday, and even on Sunday there is funeral work to be finished, and then delivered. During the summer, you can never tell what working at the flower shop will be like. One day the phone hardly rings at all and the next day can be like a holiday with the phone ringing off the hook and people coming in left and right. The last two days have been busy ones after a week of near silence. We had an order for a small wedding today, just one bridal bouquet and one boutonnière. The bouquet was made up of exquisite white roses and blue delphinium with a smattering of green hydrangea. One of my favorite summer flowers is the blue delphinium or larkspur. It is a tall flower with many blossoms that convey an open heart and light spirit. They are the flower of July births. People who like wildflower arrangements really like these light flowers.

I was thinking all day about what a dirty job it is in the florist business. It is not always just about pretty flower arranging. Sometimes to get to that place, there are flowers to be cleaned, and today was a day for cleaning flowers. I stripped leaves off of five buckets of carnations, and then it was on to the roses. There were seven or eight bunches of roses to be cleaned. Thorns and most of the leaves need to be stripped of using a large tweezer-like device known as the "rose stripper". I left that shop today feeling so sweaty and cruddy with bits of debris on my shirt and arms. As I was leaving I saw the bride pulling up to pick up her pretty bouquet. She had her hair done and her veil on, and all I could think about what was how different her day must have been from mine! I silently wished her luck on her special day, and headed off.

Red Rose

My regular day job is not at the flower shop. I am a school teacher for most of the year, and the flower shop is my summer job. Contrary to what most people believe, I cannot afford to take several months off and do nothing, but I am lucky enough to love my summer job as much as I love teaching. Working at the flower shop is always filled with unexpected surprises. It can be a day filled with sadness when people come in to choose funeral flowers or it can be a day filled with happiness when there is a new birth or an anniversary. Yesterday was a happy day filled with red roses for five or six anniversary arrangements. Red roses everyone knows stand for love. They set the standard for other flowers. People will compare how expensive other flowers are by the red rose when in fact there are other flowers that cost much more: orchids or calla lilies for example.

When Valentine's Day falls on a weekend, I do come to the flower shop to help out. Why is it that men are so willing to pay such high prices to make their women happy. They come into the shop in an almost trance-like state. They don't blink an eye at the cost of a dozen red roses. They will ask for chocolates and stuffed animals, the bigger the better, and will walk out of the shop happy in knowing that for a little while they will have made their partner's life mean more. People tend to wax so eloquently about Valentine's Day, but for the florist it is a day of work and little rest. A couple of years ago, we had a huge blizzard here on Valentine's Day. Snow drifted up to two and three feet in the streets. It didn't matter. The flowers had to go out. The drivers had an extra body in each truck. One person to drive in the storm and one to get out to deliver the flowers. We somehow managed to get every order delivered. It was a Valentine's Day miracle!

Red roses are not my favorite flower. At the flower shop we have red roses everyday. For me, they represent more like the story of the movie, "American Beauty". They look so perfect and beautiful on the outside. Yes, they make a beautiful show, but really, they are perfectly ordinary. They are such a common flower. Give me other colored roses before the red. I will take orange or a vibrant pink, lavender, or even white before I would be happy with the red rose. To me colored roses should set the standard. They are far more rare in the shop than the red. So next time, think about what you are giving. Don't be a lemming and run with the crowd. Dare to step out and ask for something that has a hidden meaning. Something special that has significance to you and your loved one. Let the glory of the other colors shine on your lives!

Gladiolus

So, here goes. First of all, I guess you should know a little about me. My blog is called a Life in Flowers because of the flower shop. Not that I own one, but this particular flower shop has always been a part of my life. I live in a average town in Ohio and right now my brother owns the flower shop. Before that it belonged to my dad and before him it belonged to my grandfather. Some of my earliest memories are of the shop. The smell of carnations, roses, and eucalyptus immediately stop me in my tracks. I am intrigued by the Oasis floral foam and water pics. There is no feeling like walking into the cold flower cooler on a hot day, and being surrounded by the Monet color effect of all the buckets filled with flowers.

Unfortunately, I was not given the gift of being a flower designer. I have always been in awe of the people in my life who have such talents. They can take flowers, beautiful in and of themselves and put them together to create beautiful masterpieces every single day. Flowers are delicate and fickle things. They can wilt when you don't think think they will, but at the same time they can be forced to open when they don't want to. Designers intinctively know what to do to make lovely pieces that in the end will only leave a memory, or a smell. They aren't meant to last, but they are there for all of the important steps in our lives: births, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, funerals. Designers choices can make or break how someone remembers thoses important days. I would like to have that kind of impact on people's lives, but that is not my case. I am more of a bystander at the flower shop, but I would like to think that I play a small, yet important role, so that is what this blog is for: to give insight into the lives and importance that florists play in the life of everyone.

"Say it with Flowers" really does encompass the credo that many florists believe in. I was recently talking to an elderly gentleman who came into the shop. He had a book with him about the meaning of flowers. There are not too many people who really know or care about the meaning behind flowers anymore. Everyone knows that red roses mean love, but other than that people don't care or they just want something pretty which is fine. I know that in Victorian society they made an artform of sending flower arrangements filled with meaning. I hope to bring some of that back through this blog and so I will start today with my favorite flower, the gladiola. Most older people only see them as flowers for a funeral, but take a closer look at this fabulous flower. They are tall and striking in a variety of colors. They work well in the garden as well as any table arrangement. The secret meaning of the gladiola is "love at first sight". I think that is most appropriate since that is how I will always feel about the flower shop!