Today I learned about finding confidence and the art of flowers.

I think flowers are delightful. They’re bright and cheery. They smell beautiful. And in our culture they are a symbol of one person expressing something nice to another. What’s not to like about that? And today I was able to see the art of floral design first-hand.


The place of my study was Floral Designs by Jean, a quaint small-town flower shop owned by my best friend’s mom. Before her flower shop, she’d worked two factory jobs and was laid off from both. When she had the opportunity to go back to school for training, she took floral design and business classes. She explained that there were classes that covered specific aspects of floral design – bouquets, weddings, funerals, corsages, etc. that she had to learn before she could get her certification.


The most interesting thing I learned was that there is a LoT of prep work that goes into the flowers before they are all purdy and ready for us to buy. They arrive at the flower shop in a box, from exotic places like Columbia and California. It’s somewhat amazing to think that somewhere in the world there are sprawling fields of flowers that are destined to grace our wintry domain. As soon as she receives the flowers, she sets to work to condition them. She puts a special flower preservative with the water in the floral buckets and sets them to soak. (It’s the same type of stuff you get in those little square packets that come with your bouquets.) She explained that sometimes flowers will come in tightly closed, and in those instances she puts them in warm water. So, take note, if you receive flowers that have shy blossoms, putting them in warm water will help them bloom.


The next step she takes is stripping the flower stems of their leaves. She explained that only the stems should be under water. Leaves that are under the water line will start to decay and breed bacteria that will shorten the life of your blooms and discolor the water. And usually make it smell funky. This was sort of an “Aha!” moment for me because my fresh garden flowers usually had that problem, and now I know why.

With the roses, she said it’s good for the flowers to keep their leaves, above the water line. The thorns, however, had to go. Those things are wicked! It’s not just for your sake, either. Can you imagine reaching your hand into a bucket of rose fangs all day? Yeouch!

When I usually get a bunch of roses, I run water over them as I cut their stems. But at the shop, she cuts the flowers in a bowl of water. Snip- snip-snip. What a handy idea! You save on water, time and moola on your water bill. She lets the flowers sit to condition awhile at room temperature before putting them in her cooler.

I watched her assemble a pretty springy bouquet…

…fix up some standard Valentine’s Day bouquets for the cooler…

…prepare a plant for someone in the hospital…

…and turn a broken-off rosebud…

…into something really lovely.

I learned a lot about flowers today. (I also realized that it’s nice to have grown-up conversation over salmon spread and crackers.) It was great to see someone who is skilled in their trade at work. A couple of weeks back I helped take down the Christmas decorations at our church, and I was tasked with arranging some silk flowers in the entry. I'd jab a few flowers here and poke a few fillers there, but I was never really sure about what I was doing. So I took notice today when Jean was assembling the flowers and fillers. She'd narrow her eyes, spin the bouquet around and poke what needed to be poked where it needed to be poked. After 18 years of assembling bouquets, she knows what they're supposed to look like. She has a vision in her mind of what it's supposed to be and then she just follows that vision. Now there's a thought worth exploring.

Confidence and vision go hand in hand. If you know where you're going, you can take surer steps to get there.

What a great day of learning. And fun! So, for taking the time to teach me today’s lesson, Jean at Floral Designs should get a blue ribbon…

…I’m sure there’s a dozen shades of blue in there. :)

~~~

A lot more lessons to come…
…I’ll keep you posted.