Jim and I recognized two years ago that flowers have always been part of our family.
Flowers marked both his and my births. Loved ones offered humble bouquets to both our families the very days we were born. Jim’s family received them from family and friends in Maryland amidst his parents’ hectic schedules of dairy farming and nursing while my parents received them as both acknowledgement of my arrival in Atlanta, Georgia, and my father’s subsequent departure from that state to fight in Vietnam a few weeks later.
Ever since those days, flowers have accompanied the milestones in our lives and the lives of our family and friends to include births, graduations, weddings, holidays, and deaths. On other occasions, we have given flowers to family and friends for no other reason but to lift their spirits or pat them on the back for a job well done.
Who fostered our love of flowers? Our mothers. They both loved them, and the day that both of our moms died from cancer, flowers marked their passing as they did all of the joyous moments in their lives.
Jim’s mom, Sally, particularly enjoyed her Mother’s Day tradition of Jim buying her six or seven hanging plants that she quickly hung on her porch, marking the beginning of summer and her love of her back yard with butterflies and her hammock. My mom, Barbara, was a fan of roses, particularly white ones. She loved their scent and their beauty. A vase of white roses could always put a smile on her face. She would snip their stems every few days and remove the dying ones as their petals fell in an effort to get the longest amount of joy from them. With one last stem in a simple glass vase, she would appreciate every last moment inhaling its sweet fragrance.
Both of our mothers were flowers…
As Jim and I reached adulthood, though, our world around us also helped foster our love of flowers and nature in general.
Jim ran a small commercial landscaping business while attending Towson University. As a result, he was busy planting beautiful native species such as black-eyed Susans around his clients’ businesses as well as other reliable favorites such as impatiens, marigolds, and petunias.
Around this same time, I was in high school and living far away in Hawaii. Reaping all of the sensual joy associated with living on an island full of flowers and all of the wonderful Hawaiian traditions that go along with them, I was in heaven. Plumeria, tuberose, and orchids of various hues grew everywhere, and the tradition I relished the most? The presentation of those flowers to others in the form of leis? I adored.
Leis were beautiful gifts that I could afford to buy, and I enjoyed giving them to my friends, classmates, teachers, administrative staff, and coaches for birthdays, graduations, weddings, and sometimes for no reason at all except to show someone I appreciated that person. In fact, because leis and proms in Hawaii were synonymous at this time, I sometimes looked forward more to giving my prom dates their sweet smelling maile leis wrapped in roses and baby’s breath then to the proms, and, while proud to be graduating from high school during my graduation from Iolani High school, I was more enamored with all of the lei giving that happened shortly after we received our diplomas. I never had before seen so many flowers around the necks, arms, and heads of other people including my own. The mixture of the various flowers’ fragrances enraptured my senses! It was as if the leis were a concrete representation of the hugs and kisses of all of the family, friends, and staff at the school and, just by gazing around at all of the people and the flowers, you could see every single person was truly loved!
So? After progressing in our private careers and our kids growing older, we started thinking about a new crop to grow on our farm and there really was only one choice, cut flowers. We knew it would be hard work but work that would reap the benefit of working with a crop that has brought us and others we love so much joy. It would be as if we were working with a crop that was simply another member of our family. We also knew working with flowers would provide us with numerous opportunities to see our customers’ smiles and that we would be helping our pollinator friends along the way. What could be a better crop to grow?
