06/19/2025
Tales from the field:
A mere whisper of the words “luxury flowers” evokes images of Mercedes vans en défilé, delivering undulating swathes of garden roses, with no person breaking the barest sweat, all supplied at positively nose-bleed-inducing sums!
All that’s often true. My experience this week, in contrast, illustrates the opposite side of that coin.
I have meticulously planned this week since January. Day by day, week by week, I have worked with preeminent growers, importers, distributors, and even carefully organized my own household to accommodate this peak of my floristry year.
Then, the most opulently stocked with fabulous fresh-cut flowers and foliage that I’ve been in years, life began to happen.
My husband’s grandmother fell. My mother is suddenly hospitalized and going into emergency surgery today. New equipment shipped to the wrong address and had to be re-routed mid-delivery. Ironically, the State government decided this was the week to inform me of their error processing my pandemic assistance, which I must respond to immediately. And then, with sumptuous roses, voluptuous orchids, and profusely more fresh-cut materials all opening precisely as planned, the household air-conditioning failed against 95 degrees outside heat… and can’t be repaired for at least two days (and I do not use floral coolers)!
Through it all, this Juneteenth holiday reminds me of the courageous people who went heroically before me and overcame the kinds of existential challenges I may never face. In so doing, they profoundly changed American life, and they did not do it by losing their aim in individual mundanities.
No, now is our time to stand on the strong shoulders of those who came before us, wade through our fleeting dilemmas, and get on with the greater work our time demands.
The daily irritations will pass, and rightly so; because we Americans have bigger fish to fry!
