Ruth's Floral Therapy

07/04/2024

Eclipse with us 🌘 and safely watch the partial solar eclipse. We will use a telescope, solar binoculars, glasses, and online streaming to explore space!

🔭 STEAM Studio: Telescope Observing - Partial Solar Eclipse
📍 Richland Library St. Andrews
📅 Monday, April 8
⌚ 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.

02/03/2024

That’s a wrap for DeLoache Flowers… 🌸

The beloved flower shop on Millwood in Columbia is closing today after over 70 years in business.

“It’s just time,” the owner Jackie Branham told me.

“There’s a season for everything,” she said… quoting a Scripture.

She would know.

Her shop was there to provide flowers- for so many customers in every season…

New baby.

Weddings.

Prom.

Graduations.

Anniversaries.

Valentine’s.

Mother’s Day.

Funerals.

Now it’s their time- to say “goodbye.”

***

After I wrapped up the interview…

The owner- Jackie, insisted I take some flowers as a gift for my wife Kristen.

The designer- Gayle, (pictured below) walked me through the cooler to select some flowers they had left in stock.

“We can arrange them for you,” Gayle said.

“Might just be the last arrangement I do here,” she said.

Gayle told me her Dad taught her to create floral arrangements just like this.

And thus began a career of 40 years- the last 9 years of which were spent here.

“Just put the flowers in a circle,” she laughed as she placed the roses and daisies among the greens.

Within minutes… she created this masterpiece.

“Wow… “ I said.

“They are spectacular!”

***

I placed the flowers on our kitchen counter for my wife to see when she woke up this morning.

“They’re beautiful,” Kristen said.

I explained how I got them from DeLoache’s … on the day before their last day in business.

I further explained how part of the reason the boutique shop is closing- is because people can get flowers most anywhere these days…

Including the grocery store.

Where many a husband, (myself included)- has grabbed a bouquet along with the milk and cheese…

My wife shook her head- then said,

“You’ve gotten me lots of flowers over the years, from Costco and everywhere else.”

Then she said matter of fact… with a smile.

“Costco doesn’t sell flowers that look like THAT!”

Exactly.

***

I guess that’s the whole idea.

Something is lost- when places like DeLoache Flowers close.

Something personal.

Something special.

Something- breathtaking…

I told the kids- “In a world of Costco’s,”

I pointed at some flowers I got Kristen last week… that were starting to wilt.

“Be a DeLoache’s,” I said pointing to this extravagant arrangement.

I laughed.

If only it were that easy.

The extra mile- is not crowded.

It will get less crowded… when DeLoache’s turns out their lights a final time.

Wishing the staff at DeLoache Flowers and Branham Floral Supply the very best in the next phase- and THANK YOU for these flowers and countlesss other memories you created for customers in Columbia. ♥️

08/02/2024

🌱🌸 Our Blythewood and Northeast locations now have Seed Libraries! Whether you're gearing up for a winter garden or planning ahead for spring, we've got you covered with a variety of flower, herb, and vegetable seeds

More info: https://bit.ly/3SOshLB

08/02/2024

01/10/2023

Thank you to all my friends and family who gave me a whole month of wonderful birthday celebrations, generous gifts and kind words! Y’all are the best! Getting older is a gift, and I love you all. Onward and Upward! 💞

01/10/2023

25/07/2023

"Have faith, like the flowers, to let the old things go." ~ Lilias Trotter ("Parables of the Cross")

10/07/2023

Please share so any fans out there can get the best price! had fun designing this!

18/04/2023

18/04/2023

https://www.floretflowers.com/workwear-for-women/

This past season, my trialing obsession grew to include women’s workwear. Finding workwear for women that’s durable, comfortable, flattering, made to actually work in, and fits different body types has proven to be quite the challenge.

18/04/2023

Listening to my Columbine painting in Littleton Colorado.

02/04/2023

A new study shows that plants emit cries for help when they are under stress.

11/03/2023

Photo is impossible to take for “Charis” (©️MakotoFujimura 2008) 89x132”, mineral pigments and gold on Kumohada paper. This is what I first wrote for NYC exhibit in 2008:

Notes on Charis exhibit:

My latest golden painting, Charis, is language of gold as dispersed, gestured movement, an homage to de Kooning. Critic Clement Greenberg did not approve of De Kooning’s paintings as pure abstraction since de Kooning did not deny the “essential flatness of a painted space.” I am interested in the de Kooning that failed to fulfill Greenbergian definition of abstraction. My interest in abstraction is in the essentiation of reality, which, I believe, de Kooning was interested in as well. In that search, I became interested in creating space that is flat and spatial at the same time, Gold is that paradox: it creates space (by being semi-transparent) and remain flat (by being mirror-like) at the same time. Perhaps the only way that an “essential flatness” can be full of created space is by using gold.

Gold, in all civilizations, symbolized divinity. The act of layering gold, to me, is to pray for the divine New Reality (multi-dimensionality) to break into our broken (flat) reality. Charis, the Greek word that St. Paul used for “grace,” is an invented short hand taken from the word “charisma,” which means gift. Art is a gift, and essentially, art is grace. And “grace arena” is created in the layered gold and minerals. The more I journey deeply into the effects of gold and mineral pigments, more I am taken by the refractive possibilities of the materials, and at the same time unable to contain, and control, the glory built into them. Glory spills out, like the golden aura we stand under, a tabernacle of hope.

Makoto Fujimura

02/02/2023

This , we honor the namesake of our beloved park, Page Ellington. According to research by Historic Columbia, Ellington was a ‘brick mason or carpenter’ in the late 1800’s. Ellington was publicly given credit for his craft by Dr. James W. Babcock, which was an uncommon occurrence for African American artisans at the time. Ellington worked on the Babcock Building, the Bakery Building and many other structures on the campus.

29/01/2023

PSA: want to get your moneys worth? Order flowers from a florist, find a phone number and address and place your order with them.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=499571575614325&id=100066844590775

Did you know when you shop at 1-800-flowers you are actually paying more for your order, getting less and giving your money to a large corporation?

1-800-flowers charges you a $14.99 service fee and an additional $2.99 for a Saturday delivery. When you click the service fee icon they show a picture of a florist hand delivering your order and explain that your order is hand delivered by a florist. While that is true.

They do not give the delivering florist that $15.00 service charge to deliver or the $2.99 for the saturday delivery. In fact, they do not give the delivering florist anything to deliver. They also keep 27 percent of the posted price of the flowers and give the florist making the order no delivery fee and 73 % of the bouquet price to make and deliver your arrangement.

If your order is $69.99 plus the service fee of $14.99 plus the $2.99 saturday charge, you pay $87.97 plus tax.

The florist is given $51.08.

You are then getting a $41.08 arrangement and $10 to deliver.

Shop Local get a better product and put your money into your community and help a small business keep jobs local rather than help a big corporation get bigger.

06/01/2023

BOUQUET SHARES FOR 2023✨ Bouquet Shares go for sale February 3!

Lots of changes are coming for Boone Fox Farm in 2023. We will be farming two pieces of land for most of this coming season as we prepare the new farm land for our operation. More to come on the new property but just know we will be growing in size and will be moving into the heart of our community!

On this theme of change, we are bringing some changes to our beloved Bouquet Share subscriptions. When I first started BFF, I created the shares to connect our customers with the freshest cuts of the season. As our Share program has grown, I’ve recognized that the uniqueness of the flowers we grow and quality of our bouquets are what bring our customers back each season. I’ve also seen the burnout that has come from our Shares being 8 consecutive weeks at a time with no break for us farmers. So I went to the drawing board (in this case the calendar) and worked through a way to allow for our Bouquet Shares to serve our customers what they want and not burn out us farmers.

We will now be offering Bouquet Share MONTHS for the 2023 season - each Month will include 4 weeks of bouquets. These months have the best blooms and creative ingredients to send home our customers true works of beauty straight from the farm.

Bouquet Share Months:
•April + May (4 weeks)
•June (4 weeks)
•August (4 weeks)
•September + October (4 weeks)
•FULL SEASON (all 16 weeks!)

Pick up and delivery options for all shares!

I’m excited to make this change - I truly believe our bouquets will be the best yet this season!

Head to the link in the bio to learn more! Mark your calendars - Bouquet Shares go for sale February 3!!

16/11/2022

I spoke yesterday at a luncheon gathering of 60 MP’s and invited guests at UK Parliament. “Goodness, Beauty and Kintsugi” experience was an “immersive” lecture impossible to simply write down, but was an improvisational message to speak of a role of an artist to be the “creator of the good and the beautiful” - an exhortation from .

As part of “Beholding” experience, I had everyone hold the piece of Wedgwood fragment, and close their eyes for ten seconds (invoking Mister Rogers’ now viral “silence of gratitude” video of receiving the Lifetime Emmy Award). “Think of someone who brought beauty or goodness into your life,” I asked.

There were folks from various ideological stances in the room surprised to see each other in the same room. A listener came up and told me “rarely you get a chance as a leader to slow down … I actually found the sound of the rain so delightful”.

It was raining in the luncheon room facing the Thames. It was delightful.

11/11/2022

“And so it is that most people have no idea how beautiful the world is and how much magnificence is revealed in the tiniest things, in some flower, in a stone, in tree bark, or in a birch leaf. The grown-ups, going about their business and worries, and tormenting themselves with all kinds of details, gradually lose the perspective for these riches that children, when they are attentive and good, soon notice and love with their whole heart. And yet the greatest beauty would be achieved if everyone remained in this regard always like attentive and good children, simple and pious in sensitivities, and if people did not lose the capacity for taking pleasure as intensely in a birch leaf or a peacock’s feather or the wing of a hooded crow as in a mighty mountain or a splendid palace. What is small is not small in itself, just as that which is great is not—great. A great and eternal beauty passes through the whole world, and it is distributed fairly over that which is small and that which is large; for in such important and essential matters, no injustice is to be found on earth.”​
— Rainer Maria Rilke​ (via Tim Ferriss)

Have a beautiful weekend!

Art: "Composition with Flowers," by Odilon Redon

www.SusanCain.net

30/10/2022

30/10/2022

The work across from “Blueberry” at Fujimura Listening room is a work I did at threeish that my mother framed and gave it to me as a graduation gift from I gave it back to her at her Memory unit in Los Gatos. Even with heavy dementia, we could still speak of this painting. She saw my gift early and stewarded it. I reframed it upon her passing. Over 50 years have passed, in the gap of these paintings. Yet, my goal is to be free and guile-less as the painting I did as a child. The colors and gestures of my childhood painting is the essence of everything I paint today.