Florist Quotes

So, what do you do when you know you have two days to live? Eat an entire Bitter Chocolate Death cake all by myself. Reread my favorite novel. Buy eight dozen roses from the best florist in town--the super expensive ones, the ones that smell like roses rather than merely looking like them--and put them all over my apartment. Take a good long look at everyone I love.

ordered me a sky from a florist

The cactus thrives in the desert while the fern thrives in the wetland. The fool will try to plant them in the same flowerbox. The florist will sigh and add a wall divider and proper soil to both sides. The grandparent will move the flowerbox halfway out of the sun. The child will turn it around properly so that the fern is in the shade, and not the cactus. The moral of the story? Kids are smart.

Marriage is a conspiracy from Tiffany, florists, the diamond industry, and Christian fundamentalists. The only thing good about it is the diamond ring, the wedding gifts, and the honeymoon.

One city and four afterthoughts. Yet, if the residents of Manhattan got down from their self-reverential pedestals, they’d soon realize that Manhattan was the most provincial of towns, albeit wealthier. A more than superficial look would reveal a mini Fort Wayne every three blocks. Duplicates of supermarket, pharmacy, candy store, florist, so that the vertical dwellers need journey no more than three blocks in either direction from their front door. Crossing to a fourth block would only bring repetition of services, with no advantage and a longer walk home.

I waste my life. I want to. It's the thing to do with a life. We were wrong about work--it isn't the best thing, no matter how much you love it. Wasting time is better.

...We have seven people who knew the skewers were there: the wedding planner, the reception hall manager, the dressmaker, the florist, the veil-maker, the cake-maker, and the caterer. I haven't ruled out the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker, either.

Hey Beautiful,' said a familiar male voice. She opened her eyes. Lucas knelt beside her bed, holding a bouquet of roses in his hands. She sat up and saw more roses all around the room. 'What sis you do, rob a florist?' He gave her his bad-boy grin, and Kylie felt her heart melt just a little. 'No, but let me just say that my grandmother is going to be really pissed when she sees her garden in the morning.

The black volhv pivoted to me. “I have questions.” “Can it wait?” “No. Your wedding is in two weeks. Have you prepared your guest list?” “Why do I need a list? I kind of figured that whoever wanted to show up would show up.” “You need a list so you know how many people you are feeding. Do you have a caterer?” “No.” “But you did order the cake?” “Umm…” “Florist?” “Florist?” “The person who delivers expensive flowers and sets them up in pretty arrangements everyone ignores?” “No.” Roman blinked. “I’m almost afraid to ask. Do you at least have the dress?” “Yes.” “Is it white?” “Yes.” He squinted at me. “Is it a wedding dress?” “It’s a white dress.” “Have you worn it before?” “Maybe.” Ascanio snickered.” “The ring, Kate?” Oh crap. Roman heaved a sigh. “What do you think this is, a party where you get to show up, say ‘I do,’ and go home?” “Yes?” That’s kind of how it went in my head.

It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life.

She turned to Knox. “And you were right about Nash getting hurt and now you’re both mad at each other for that.” “Well, breakfast didn’t help,” Knox admitted. Naomi closed her eyes. “Is that why you were such a bridezilla with the florist yesterday?” “Baby’s breath is stupid. Fight me,” he said.

I stopped in front of a florist's window. Behind me, the screeching and throbbing boulevard vanished. Gone, too, were the voices of newspaper vendors selling their daily poisoned flowers. Facing me, behind the glass curtain, a fairyland. Shining, plump carnations, with the pink voluptuousness of women about to reach maturity, poised for the first step of a sprightly dance; shamelessly lascivious gladioli; virginal branches of white lilac; roses lost in pure meditation, undecided between the metaphysical white and the unreal yellow of a sky after the rain.

You think that you've moved on. That you’re happier and now that you think about it — you're quite glad that it didn’t work out because you are free and happy. You're so happy. And it’s better this way. "Here, let me tell you my reasons," you say. "Let me explain what I mean." After hours of telling your neighbour and the florist and the girl on the bus, you conclude: "So, you see? I’m happier now.” You tell the brokenhearted your tale and assure them it's for the best, “So you see? It was meant to be.” But my dear, my foolish hurting dear, your ego is the bullet left in the wound. It’s this ego that needs to explain itself and justify the battle. A true warrior would be too busy fighting to live.

Screw the wedding—crap. Hold on... No, honey, of course I still want to get married! I was talking to Stella about the, um, wedding planner…no, don’t fire her. She’s great. I was just frustrated in the moment. Bridal nerves, you know. I’m fine now. Yes, I promise...why did I call for you? Uh, I’m craving those new raspberry lemon cookies from Crumble & Bake. Can you please run down and get some for me? Thank you! Love you. Sorry about that. Alex has been so on edge about the wedding. He made our florist cry the other day... We’re working on his interpersonal skills.

Reading for me, was like breathing. It was probably akin to masturbation for my brain. Getting off on the fantasy within the pages of a good novel felt necessary to my survival. If I wasn't asleep, knitting, or working, I was reading. This was for several reasons, all of them focused around the infititely superior and enviable lives of fictional heroines to real-life people. Take romans for instance. Fictional women in romance novels never get their period. They never have morning breath. They orgasm seventeen times a day. And they never seem to have jobs with bosses. These clean, well-satisfied, perm-minty-breathed women have fulfilling careers as florists, bakery owners, hair stylists or some other kind of adorable small business where they decorate all day. If they do have a boss, he's a cool guy (or gal) who's invested in the woman's love life. Or, he's a super hot billionaire trying to get in her pants. My boss cares about two things: Am I on time ? Are all my patients alive and well at the end of my shift? And the mend in the romance novels are too good to be true; but I love it, and I love them. Enter stage right the independently wealthy venture capitalist suffering from the ennui of perfection until a plucky interior decorator enters stage left and shakes up his life and his heart with perky catch phrases and a cute nose that wrinkles when she sneezes. I suck at decorating. The walls of my apartment are bare. I am allergic to most store-bought flowers. If I owned a bakery, I'd be broke and weigh seven hundred pounds, because I love cake.

DEAD FLIES ON THE SILLS OF sunny windows, weeds along the pathway, the kitchen empty. The house was melancholy, deceiving; it was like a cathedral where, amid the serenity, something is false, the saints are made of florist’s wax, the organ has been gutted.

Your mother’s holding for you on line two,” she says. “If I were you, I’d buy a florist and a candy shop. Maybe a winery too. Sounds like she needs them.” Might be time to resign from my personal life.

Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life.

And we drove towards the widening dawn, that now streaked half the sky with a wintry bouquet of pink of roses, orange of tiger-lilies, as if my husband had ordered me a sky from a florist. The day broke around me like a cool dream.

Diane sometimes hears that Troy is an actuary. Sometimes she hears Troy is a florist. Sometimes she hears Troy is a cop, a toll collector, a professor, a musician, a stand-up comedian. Once, she heard a terrible rumor he became a librarian but she could not imagine Troy becoming the darkest of evil beasts no matter what he had done to her. Is it even possible for a human to become a librarian?

Roses are picked every day, they are told that they will be better off sold in the flower shoppe. And so they go from the hands of the picker; to the hands of the delivery man; to the hands of the florist; to the hands of the customer; and then often to the hands of the final recipient of the rose. From field, cut by scissors and passed from hand to hand. The world has forgotten that it is okay for roses to be in fields, the world has forgotten the beauty of the rose uncut. The bouquet is praised and given away but the wild roses are forgotten. People have forgotten what “wild” means; they think it means something entirely different. The wild rose remains untouched, with roots and swayed by the meadow winds. And that is wild. I am wild for having roots and for being untouched and for seeing things that people have forgotten. And I will always remember— that it is okay to be uncut, that it is okay to be untouched by darkness, it is okay to be wild.

The entire place smelled like the bastard child of a florist and a perfume shop.

But I wasn’t about to complain; we could never have afforded a florist of our choice. I wonder what it must be like to have the money to do exactly what you want.

I’ve been here at some florist called A Rose by Any Other Name for the past hour, staring at thirteen different flowers that all look the same, smell the same, and make me want to kill myself the same.

I am in love with the first lady of the United States. At the moment, a dozen vans from District florists are pulling up at the White House, and the staffers are helping me fill up her room. I’m going to ask her to marry me. Today.

Guy kept his eyes on her. "I brought you some flowers." He held a bouquet wrapped in florist paper behind him, as if uncertain about offering it. Ivy smiled and stood up, holding out her hands. "Oh!" She looked from the roses to Guy, tears stinging her eyes. "They're lavender." "I did the wrong thing," Guy said, quickly pulling them away. Ivy reached for the flowers, her hands catching and holding his. "No! No, they're perfect." She looked into his eyes. "How did you know that--that I love lavender roses?" He shrugged. "They just seemed right for you.

In my mind, no other flower can compete with the perfection and the fragrance of the Peony. The silky petals, delicate shape, romantic shades and graceful foliage make this flower my all time favorite and I’m not alone. Brides plan their wedding dates around peony season. Flower enthusiasts plant them all through their gardens. Florists go crazy over all the different shades available from white, to coral, yellow to reds and every imaginable pink!  Sadly, this bloom can only be enjoyed in nature for a very short time each year. That’s the reason their paper counterparts have become such a hit!

In New York the Fifth Avenue Lingerie Shop is on Madison Avenue, the Madison Pet Shop is on Lexington Avenue, the Park Avenue Florist is on Madison Avenue, and the Lexington Hand Laundry is on Third Avenue. New York is the home of 120 pawnbrokers, and it is where Bishop Sheen's brother, Dr. Sheen, shares an office with one Dr. Bishop.

Look closer at this street corner: The sun is setting. The vendor at the newspaper stand packs up the dailies and puts away the cartons of eggs. Students with laptops in their arms shuffle out of the cha chaan teng. Elderly couples and their poodles take a stroll by the pier. You can still hear the uproar of the crowds that once gathered on the steep slopes for film screenings, festivals, protests. The florists at the wet market put away the last lilies. The last tram slots itself into the station. And then the scene dissolves again. Maybe you can’t save this place; maybe it isn’t even worth saving. But for a moment, there was a sliver of what this city could have become. And that is why we’re still here.

The moral high ground proved to be one hell of an aphrodisiac...

I am against the florists and floristry! Let the flowers not be the toys of our pleasures!

I love you,” he whispered as I died right there on the spot. It wasn’t convenient, my dying the night before my wedding. I didn’t know how my mom was going to explain it to the florist.

Rose is the feminine flower that gives herself wholly and such that the only thing left to her is the joy of having given herself. Her perfume is a crazy mystery. When inhaled deeply it touches the intimate depth of the heart and leaves the inside of the entire body perfumed. The way she opens herself into a woman is so beautiful. The petals have a good taste in the mouth-all you have to do is try. Yet rose is not it but she. The scarlet ones are of great sensuality. The white ones are the peace of the God. It's very rare to find white ones at the florists.

1 The summer our marriage failed we picked sage to sweeten our hot dark car. We sat in the yard with heavy glasses of iced tea, talking about which seeds to sow when the soil was cool. Praising our large, smooth spinach leaves, free this year of Fusarium wilt, downy mildew, blue mold. And then we spoke of flowers, and there was a joke, you said, about old florists who were forced to make other arrangements. Delphiniums flared along the back fence. All summer it hurt to look at you. 2 I heard a woman on the bus say, “He and I were going in different directions.” As if it had something to do with a latitude or a pole. Trying to write down how love empties itself from a house, how a view changes, how the sign for infinity turns into a noose for a couple. Trying to say that weather weighed down all the streets we traveled on, that if gravel sinks, it keeps sinking. How can I blame you who kneeled day after day in wet soil, pulling slugs from the seedlings? You who built a ten-foot arch for the beans, who hated a bird feeder left unfilled. You who gave carrots to a gang of girls on bicycles. 3 On our last trip we drove through rain to a town lit with vacancies. We’d come to watch whales. At the dock we met five other couples—all of us fluorescent, waterproof, ready for the pitch and frequency of the motor that would lure these great mammals near. The boat chugged forward—trailing a long, creamy wake. The captain spoke from a loudspeaker: In winter gray whales love Laguna Guerrero; it’s warm and calm, no killer whales gulp down their calves. Today we’ll see them on their way to Alaska. If we get close enough, observe their eyes—they’re bigger than baseballs, but can only look down. Whales can communicate at a distance of 300 miles—but it’s my guess they’re all saying, Can you hear me? His laughter crackled. When he told us Pink Floyd is slang for a whale’s two-foot penis, I stopped listening. The boat rocked, and for two hours our eyes were lost in the waves—but no whales surfaced, blowing or breaching or expelling water through baleen plates. Again and again you patiently wiped the spray from your glasses. We smiled to each other, good troopers used to disappointment. On the way back you pointed at cormorants riding the waves— you knew them by name: the Brants, the Pelagic, the double-breasted. I only said, I’m sure whales were swimming under us by the dozens. 4 Trying to write that I loved the work of an argument, the exhaustion of forgiving, the next morning, washing our handprints off the wineglasses. How I loved sitting with our friends under the plum trees, in the white wire chairs, at the glass table. How you stood by the grill, delicately broiling the fish. How the dill grew tall by the window. Trying to explain how camellias spoil and bloom at the same time, how their perfume makes lovers ache. Trying to describe the ways sex darkens and dies, how two bodies can lie together, entwined, out of habit. Finding themselves later, tired, by a fire, on an old couch that no longer reassures. The night we eloped we drove to the rainforest and found ourselves in fog so thick our lights were useless. There’s no choice, you said, we must have faith in our blindness. How I believed you. Trying to imagine the road beneath us, we inched forward, honking, gently, again and again.

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Then she remembered the florist was closed. And the party was cancelled. Finally, some time to rest and reflect on her marital choices.

Every week seems to bring another luxuriantly creamy envelope, the thickness of a letter-bomb, containing a complex invitation – a triumph of paper engineering – and a comprehensive dossier of phone numbers, email addresses, websites, how to get there, what to wear, where to buy the gifts. Country house hotels are being block-booked, great schools of salmon are being poached, vast marquees are appearing overnight like Bedouin tent cities. Silky grey morning suits and top hats are being hired and worn with an absolutely straight face, and the times are heady and golden for florists and caterers, string quartets and Ceilidh callers, ice sculptors and the makers of disposable cameras. Decent Motown cover-bands are limp with exhaustion. Churches are back in fashion, and these days the happy couple are travelling the short distance from the place of worship to the reception on open-topped London buses, in hot-air balloons, on the backs of matching white stallions, in micro-lite planes. A wedding requires immense reserves of love and commitment and time off work, not least from the guests. Confetti costs eight pounds a box. A bag of rice from the corner shop just won’t cut it anymore.

The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are. However, start by acknowledging and recognizing abundance without. See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the display of magnificent flowers outside a florist’s shop, biting into a succulent fruit, or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgment of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within. Then let it flow out. When you smile at a stranger, there is already a minute outflow of energy.

In my light-headedness and fatigue, which made me feel drastically cut off from myself and as if I were observing it all at a remove, I walked past candy shops and coffee shops and shops with antique toys and Delft tiles from the 1800s, old mirrors and silver glinting in the rich, cognac-colored light, inlaid French cabinets and tables in the French court style with garlanded carvings and veneerwork that would have made Hobie gasp with admiration—in fact the entire foggy, friendly, cultivated city with its florists and bakeries and antiekhandels reminded me of Hobie, not just for its antique-crowded richness but because there was a Hobie-like wholesomeness to the place, like a children’s picture book where aproned tradespeople swept the floors and tabby cats napped in sunny windows. But there was much too much to see, and

Life is a Curious Thing. Winter turns to spring and Parvaneh passes her driving test. Of teaches Adrian how to change tires. The kid may have bought a Toyota, but that doesn't mean he's entirely beyond help, Ove explains to Sonja when he visits her one Sunday in April. The he shows her some photographs of Parvaneh's little boy. Four months old and as fat as a seal pup. Patrick has tried to force one of those cell phone camera things on Ove, but he doesn't trust them. So he walks around with a thick wad of paper copies inside his wallet instead, held together by a rubber band. Shows everyone he meets. Even the people who work at the florist's,

On Internment, you can be anything you dream--a novelist or a singer, a florist or a factory worker. You can spend entire afternoons watching clouds so close it's as though you're riding on them. Your life is yours to embrace or to squander. There's only one rule: You don't approach the edge. If you do, it's already over. My brother is proof of that. He has successfully quieted my delusions I held about seeing the ground for myself.

Into the 1960s and even the ’70s, players held offseason jobs not to fill the time but to feed their families. Yogi Berra worked at a Sears, Roebuck. Lou Brock became a florist. Players sold real estate and insurance, worked in mines and on ranches.

Miss Kuhli (Merrihew had heard it “Cooley” the day before, and had built quite a different picture) was Eurasian. Not since the perfection of ferro-concrete and its self-stressed freedom has architecture been able to match the construction of such eyelids and supraorbital arches as those with which Miss Kuhli had been born. Her hands seemed to be the cooperative work of a florist and a choreographer. Her body had not been designed, but inspired, and her hair was such that it could not be believed at a single glance.

I hide from the Friend in a florist's shop, under a case of flowers. He stands by the case as though at my coffin, crying and wringing his hands and begging me to give up the assassination of the Holy Man. I am crying too, my tears falling in yellow dust, but I won't give up.

justice, n. I tell you about Sal Kinsey, the boy who spit on me every morning for a month in seventh grade, to the point that I could no longer ride the bus. It’s just a story, nothing more than that. In fact, it comes up because I’m telling you how I don’t really hate many people in this world, and you say that’s hard to believe, and I say, “Well, there’s always Sal Kinsey,” and then have to explain. The next day, you bring home a photo of him now, downloaded from the Internet. He is morbidly obese — one of my favorite phrases, so goth, so judgmental. He looks miserable, and the profile you've found says he’s single and actively looking. I think that will be it. But then, the next night, you tell me that you tracked down his office address. And not only that, you sent him a dozen roses, signing the card, It is so refreshing to see that you've grown up to be fat, desperate, and lonely. Anonymous, of course. You even ordered the bouquet online, so no florist could divulge your personal information. I can’t help but admire your capacity for creative vengeance. And at the same time, I am afraid of it.

Aloof, as if looking through thick glass into an aquarium, she watched faces, fruit in storewindows, cans of vegetables, jars of olives, redhotpokerplants in a florist's, newspapers, electric signs drifting by. When they passed cross-streets a puff of air came in her face off the river. Sudden jetbright glances of eyes under straw hats, attitudes of chins, thick lips, pouting lips, Cupid's bows, hungry shadow under cheekbones, faces of girls and young men nuzzled fluttering against her like moths as she walked with her stride even to his through the tingling yellow night.

Tonight, I went to look for cypripediums at the florist, and with them I decorated my friend Jerome, whose flesh already complements the subtleties of their orchid-green, brown, and violet sulphurs. Both have the same plump brilliance — as if sticky — both achieve that triumphant state of a substance at its peak — at the extreme accomplishment of itself — that precedes effervescence and purification. Stretched out on his side, Jerome seemed to be sleeping, his sex introduced into the calyx of a cypripedium, whose liquor inundated him, while a cascade of lively flowery odours escaped from the swarthy bruises that marbleised his rose-coloured secret.

People peep into boxes at moving stereoscopic prints, imagining they're in other worlds, and the crowd around a glassblower wonders whether icicles have formed in summer. Potted trees revive and suddenly look fresh when a florist sprinkles water on them, while papier-mâché turtles hanging out for sale move in the wind and take on souls.

We passed the Irish club, and the florist’s with its small stiff pink-and-white carnations in a bucket, and the drapers called ‘Elvina’s’, which displayed in its window Bear Brand stockings and knife-pleated skirts like cloth concertinas and pasty-shaped hats on false heads. We passed the confectioner’s – or failed to pass it; the window attracted Karina. She balled her hands into her pockets, and leant back, her feet apart; she looked rooted, immovable. The cakes were stacked on decks of sloping shelves, set out on pink doilies whitened by falls of icing sugar. There were vanilla slices, their airy tiers of pastry glued together with confectioners’ custard, fat and lolling like a yellow tongue. There were bubbling jam puffs and ballooning Eccles cakes, slashed to show their plump currant insides. There were jam tarts the size of traffic lights; there were whinberry pies oozing juice like black blood. ‘Look at them buns,’ Karina would say. ‘Look.’ I would turn sideways and see her intent face. Sometimes the tip of her tongue would appear, and slide slowly upwards towards her flat nose. There were sponge buns shaped like fat mushrooms, topped with pink icing and half a glace cherry. There were coconut pyramids, and low square house-shaped chocolate buns, finished with a big roll of chocolate-wrapped marzipan which was solid as the barrel of a cannon.

It was so dark outside, I forgot where I was. I had no sense of geography or time or space, not even when he took my face in his hands and touched his forehead to mine, closing his eyes, as if to savor the powerful moment. “I love you,” he whispered as I died right there on the spot. It wasn’t convenient, my dying the night before my wedding. I didn’t know how my mom was going to explain it to the florist. But she’d have to; I was totally done for. I’d had half a glass of wine all evening but felt completely inebriated. When I finally arrived home, I had no idea how I’d gotten there. I was intoxicated--drunk on a cowboy. A cowboy who, in less than twenty-four hours, would become my husband.

That’s a bit careless. Who was looking after them?’ ‘You were,’ sighed Finefellow. She drew a breath before reeling off the list. ‘Agents Fifteen and Sixteen have run off to open a florists together; Agent Twenty-Six has been trampled on by a herd of stampeding buffalo and Agent Nine got her scarf caught in a tumble-dryer … whilst she was still wearing it!

I pinched tendrils of periwinkle at the roots until they hung in long, limp strands, and grabbed a dozen bright white spider mums. I wrapped the periwinkle tightly around the base of the mums like a ribbon and used florist's wire to create loose curlicues of the leafy groundcover around a multilayered explosion of mums. The effect was like fireworks, dizzying and grand.

It’s a scientific fact that there are only a handful of jobs you’re allowed to have if you’re one of the leads in a romantic comedy: dog walker, architect, kindergarten teacher, cupcake chef, florist, special needs veterinarian, suspiciously well-paid magazine writer, and independent bookstore owner. So it stands to reason that the likelihood of meeting your soul mate in one is high.

There was a florist at the corner, closed for the night. I stopped in my tracks. Along with the heavy branches of lilacs and tangled stems of forsythia was a fluffy mound of tiny sleeping chicks- a living, breathing Easter basket. Paris continued to surprise me; instead of the slick consumerism of a twenty-first-century world capital, it was the little things, the living things, that made me smile.

Are we talking a white dress and reception? Because I’ve been to loads of weddings, and I’ve had it. Friends resent the plane tickets and hotel bills; the happy couple resents the catering. Both parties think they’re doing the other a huge favor. The hoo-ha is over before you know it, and all anyone’s got to show for it is a hangover. Weddings are a racket, and the only people who profit are florists and bartenders.

Equal marriage makes a huge impact, because people see gay people being allowed to be happy,” he says. “And these events involve families – and not just families but caterers and florists and hotels. And all these people are forced to accept that here are two people who are in love and want to build a family together . . . But I’m not complacent. Progress can falter, and rights can be taken away, and people can be repressed again very easily.

She gasps at the sight that greets her. The florists have gone to town. There are wild meadow flowers everywhere, in pinks and whites and blues, all lit by tiny fairy lights and soft pink lanterns. Yes. This will do. Ana is stunned. She whips around and gapes at me. "You wanted hearts and flowers." She stares at me in disbelief. "You have my heart." And I wave at the room. "And here are the flowers," she murmurs. "Christian, it's lovely." Her voice is hoarse and I know she's close to tears. Plucking up my courage, I lead her farther into the room. In the center of the arbor, I sink onto one knee. Ana catches her breath, and her hands fly to her mouth. From my inside jacket pocket, I pull out the ring and hold it up for her. "Anastasia Steele. I love you. I want to love, cherish, and protect you for the rest of my life. Be mine. Always. Share my life with me. Marry me." She is the love of my life. It will only ever be Ana. Her tears start to fall in earnest but her smile eclipses the moon, the stars, the sun, and all the flowers in the boathouse.

I’m trying to think…are you the florist?” Malcolm’s voice was slightly off, as if it were coming from someplace other than his own throat. ... She took a sip from her own drink. “Nope. I like flowers as much as the next woman, but I can’t tell a dahlia from a daisy.” “Or a lupine from a lobelia?” Hugh Parteger said. “Or a carnation from a chrysanthemum.” “You’re obviously not into floral sects,” he said. She almost spit out a mouthful of kir royale laughing. ... “Mr. Parteger, I don’t discuss what I do in my garden bed with anyone.” “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “For most women, it’s just a matter of finding the right tool.” She took another drink, enjoying herself immensely. ... “Yes, but it’s such a tedious process, finding one that fits and works really well. Better just stick to hand weeding. Fewer complications that way.” “Ah, so you’re a master gardener.” She actually giggled. How mortifying. She took a long swallow from her drink. “As Voltaire said, we must cultivate our garden.” “I believe he also said, ‘Once, a philosopher, twice, a pervert.

How about whatever song comes on next, that’s our song. It’ll be fate.” “We can’t just make our own fate.” “Sure we can.” Peter reaches over to turn on the radio. “Wait! Just any radio station? What if it’s not a slow song?” “Okay so we’ll put on Lite 101.” Peter hits the button. “Winnie the Pooh doesn’t know what to do, got a honey jar stuck on his nose,” a woman croons. Peter says, “What the hell?” as I say, “This can’t be our song.” “Best out of three?” he suggests. “Let’s not force it. We’ll know it when we hear it, I think.” “Maybe we’ll hear it at the prom,” Peter offers. “Oh, that reminds me. What color is your dress? My mom’s going to ask her florist friend to make your corsage.” “It’s dusty pink.” It came in the mail yesterday, and when I tried it on for everybody, Trina said it was “the most Lara Jean” dress she’d ever seen. I texted a picture to Stormy, who wrote back, “Ooh-la-la,” with a dancing woman emoji. “What the heck is dusty pink?” Peter wants to know. “It’s like a rose gold color.” Peter still looks confused, so I sigh and say, “Just tell your mom. She’ll know.

Immediately after Mrs. Carey’s death Emma had ordered from the florist masses of white flowers for the room in which the dead woman lay. It was sheer waste of money. Emma took far too much upon herself. Even if there had been no financial necessity, he would have dismissed her. But Philip went to her, and hid his face in her bosom, and wept as though his heart would break. And she, feeling that he was almost her own son — she had taken him when he was a month old — consoled him with soft words. She promised that she would come and see him sometimes, and that she would never forget him; and

The Men’s Wearhouse where the boys were measured for their suits was holy; the T.J. Maxx where the girls texted each other pictures from their respective dressing rooms was holy; the Shoe Carnival where they staggered up and down the aisles almost laughing; the Michael’s where they chose posterboards for collages; the florist where they pointed at baby’s breath; the bakery where they deliberated over tea cookies; the Clinique counter where they bought waterproof mascara; the Cheesecake Factory where they ate bang-bang shrimp after it all and were very very kind to each other was holy, and the light fixtures she always made fun of seemed to bloom the whole time on their stems.

Who am I? You know who I am. Or you think you do. I’m your florist. I’m your grocer. I’m your porter. I’m your waiter. I’m the owner of the dry-goods store on the corner of Elm. I’m the shoeshine boy. I’m the judo teacher. I’m the Buddhist priest. I’m the Shinto priest. I’m the Right Reverend Yoshimoto. So prease to meet you. (…) I’m the one you call Jap. I’m the one you call Nip. I’m the one you call Slits. I’m the one you call Slopes. I’m the one you call Yellowbelly. I’m the one you call Gook. I’m the one you don’t see at all—we all look alike. I’m the one you see everywhere—we’re taking over the neighborhood. I’m the one you look for under your bed every night before you go to sleep. (…) I’m your nightmare…

After he had gone Mrs. Corcoran began to inspect the ferns, lifting up the fronds to check for dead foliage, making notes on the backs of the envelopes with a tiny silver screw-point pencil. To her husband she said: “Did you see that wreath the Bartles sent?” “Wasn’t that nice of them.” “No, in fact I don’t think it appropriate for an employee to send something like that. I wonder, is Bob thinking about asking you for a raise?” “Now, hon.” “I can’t believe these plants, either,” she said, jabbing a forefinger into the soil. “This African violet is almost dead. Louise would be humiliated if she knew.” “It’s the thought that counts.” “I know, but still, if I’ve learned one thing from this it is never to order flowers from Sunset Florists again. All the things from Tina’s Flowerland are so much nicer.

I was reminded of something the florist Sarah Ryhanen had said when we met in her studio. “The number one question you get when you have a flower shop is, ‘How long is this going to last?’” She shrugged her shoulders, as if she simultaneously understood the impetus for the question and was frustrated by it. “Sometimes the most beautiful experience with a flower is brief—like these garden roses from the field. They are so fragile because they put all their energy into making this intoxicating scent, which means that they don’t last more than twenty-four hours on your kitchen table. But those twenty-four hours you have to smell that flower are pretty amazing.” Our efforts to prolong our joy sometimes diminish its intensity, for example, when we choose blooms genetically engineered for hardiness over short-lived varieties bred for scent.

The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are. However, start by acknowledging and recognizing abundance without. See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the display of magnificent flowers outside a florist’s shop, biting into a succulent fruit, or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgment of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within. Then let it flow out. When you smile at a stranger, there is already a minute outflow of energy. You become a giver. Ask yourself often: “What can I give here; how can I be of service to this person, this situation?” You don’t need to own anything to feel abundant, although if you feel abundant consistently things will almost certainly come to you.

July I watch eagerly a certain country graveyard that I pass in driving to and from my farm. It is time for a prairie birthday, and in one corner of this graveyard lives a surviving celebrant of that once important event. It is an ordinary graveyard, bordered by the usual spruces, and studded with the usual pink granite or white marble headstones, each with the usual Sunday bouquet of red or pink geraniums. It is extraordinary only in being triangular instead of square, and in harboring, within the sharp angle of its fence, a pin-point remnant of the native prairie on which the graveyard was established in the 1840’s. Heretofore unreachable by scythe or mower, this yard-square relic of original Wisconsin gives birth, each July, to a man-high stalk of compass plant or cutleaf Silphium, spangled with saucer-sized yellow blooms resembling sunflowers. It is the sole remnant of this plant along this highway, and perhaps the sole remnant in the western half of our county. What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked. This year I found the Silphium in first bloom on 24 July, a week later than usual; during the last six years the average date was 15 July. When I passed the graveyard again on 3 August, the fence had been removed by a road crew, and the Silphium cut. It is easy now to predict the future; for a few years my Silphium will try in vain to rise above the mowing machine, and then it will die. With it will die the prairie epoch. The Highway Department says that 100,000 cars pass yearly over this route during the three summer months when the Silphium is in bloom. In them must ride at least 100,000 people who have ‘taken’ what is called history, and perhaps 25,000 who have ‘taken’ what is called botany. Yet I doubt whether a dozen have seen the Silphium, and of these hardly one will notice its demise. If I were to tell a preacher of the adjoining church that the road crew has been burning history books in his cemetery, under the guise of mowing weeds, he would be amazed and uncomprehending. How could a weed be a book? This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora, which in turn is one episode in the funeral of the floras of the world. Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life. * * *

No wise sayings today?" Tiana asked. Ms. Rose loved sharing nuggets of wisdom she said were passed down from her mother. The woman's brow lifted. "Actually, I do have one for you: Ti bwa ou pa wè, se li ki pete je ou. The twig you don't see is the one that puts out your eye." Tiana peered at the flowers Ms. Rose had handed her. "Are there twigs in here?" "Be cautious," the woman said. "It means to always be aware of your surroundings.

GOD I am ready for you to come back. Whether in a train full of dying criminals or on the gleaming saddle of a locust, you are needed again. The earth is a giant chessboard where the dark squares get all the rain. On this one the wet is driving people mad—the bankers all baying in the woods while their markets fail, a florist chewing up flowers to spit mouthfuls here and there as his daughter’s lungs seize shut from the pollen. There is a flat logic to neglect. Sweet nothings sour in the air while the ocean hoots itself to sleep. I live on the skull of a giant burning brain, the earth’s core. Sometimes I can feel it pulsing through the dirt, though even this you ignore. The mind wants what it wants: daily newspapers, snapping turtles, a pound of flesh. The work I’ve been doing is a kind of erasing. I dump my ashtray into a bucket of paint and coat myself in the gray slick, rolling around on the carpets of rich strangers while they applaud and sip their scotch. A body can cause almost anything to happen. Remember when you breathed through my mouth, your breath becoming mine? Remember when you sang for me and I fell to the floor, turning into a thousand mice? Whatever it was we were practicing cannot happen without you. I thought I saw you last year, bark wrapped around your thighs, lurching toward the shore at dawn. It was only mist and dumb want. They say even longing has its limits: in a bucket, an eel will simply stop swimming long before it starves. Wounded wolves will pad away from their pack to die lonely and cold. Do you not know how scary it can get here? The talons that dropped me left long scars around my neck that still burn in the wind. I was promised epiphany, earth- honey, and a flood of milk, but I will settle for anything that brings you now, you still-hungry mongrel, you glut of bone, you, scentless as gold.

Every time you eat a fruit for the first time that year you need to make a wish. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.” I thought for a few seconds. “I can’t think of a wish.” “Some life,” she said, meaning either that my life was so enviably put together that there was nothing left to wish for—or that it was so hopelessly bereft of joy that wishing something was a luxury no longer worth considering. “You have to wish. Think harder.” “Can I yield my wish to you?” “I’ve already had my wish.” “When?” “In the taxi.” “What was it?” “How quickly we forget: that you’d come for lunch.” “You mean you wasted a whole wish on having me over for lunch!” “I did. And don’t make me regret it.” I didn’t say anything. She squeezed my arm on our way to the wine store. I decided to stop by the florist nearby. “He’ll love the flowers.” “I haven’t bought flowers in years.” She gave a perfunctory nod. “They’re not just for him,” I said. “I know,” she said ever so lightly, almost feigning to overlook what I’d said.

They return drunk and laughing to the kitchen of Number 4 rue Vauborel. “Dinan is now twenty kilometers to the north,” says Madame Ruelle. “Right in the middle of the sea!” Three days later, Madame Fontineau overhears that the German garrison commander is allergic to goldenrod. Madame Carré, the florist, tucks great fistfuls of it into an arrangement headed for the château. The women funnel a shipment of rayon to the wrong destination. They intentionally misprint a train timetable. Madame Hébrard, the postmistress, slides an important-looking letter from Berlin into her underpants, takes it home, and starts her evening fire with it. They come spilling into Etienne’s kitchen with gleeful reports that someone has heard the garrison commander sneezing, or that the dog shit placed on a brothel doorstep reached the target of a German’s shoe bottom perfectly. Madame Manec pours sherry or cider or Muscadet; someone sits stationed by the door to serve as sentry. Small and stooped Madame Fontineau boasts that she tied up the switchboard at the château for an hour; dowdy and strapping Madame Guiboux says she helped her grandsons paint a stray dog the colors of the French flag and sent it running through the Place Chateaubriand.

The rapid growth of Message- combined with an outpouring of florists offering consultations in the language of flowers to the streams of brides Marlena and I turned away- caused a subtle but concrete shift in the Bay Area flower industry. Marlena reported that peony, marigold, and lavender lingered in their plastic buckets at the flower market while tulips, lilac, and passionflower sold out before the sun rose. For the first time anyone could remember, jonquil became available long after its natural bloom season had ended. By the end of July, bold brides carried ceramic bowls of strawberries or fragrant clusters of fennel, and no one questioned their aesthetics but rather marveled at the simplicity of their desire. If the trajectory continued, I realized, Message would alter the quantities of anger, grief, and mistrust growing in the earth on a massive scale. Farmers would uproot fields of foxglove to plant yarrow, the soft clusters of pink, yellow, and cream the cure to a broken heart. The prices of sage, ranunculus, and stock would steadily increase. Plum trees would be planted for the sole purpose of harvesting their delicate, clustered blossoms and sunflowers would fall permanently out of fashion, disappearing from flower stands, craft stores, and country kitchens. Thistle would be cleared compulsively from empty lots and overgrown gardens.

Now, do you want a poppy?” “A poppy? Whatever for?” “I’ve noticed it on your cards. Is it important?” “Oh, the poppy. It’s quite a mixed symbol---a symbol of silence, you see. How strange. And yes, it is the symbol for the ball motif. It seems that women have grown tired of the silent, subservient role. So, they have taken that very symbol to flaunt the reversal of roles for this event.” “Would you like to flaunt it?” Constance froze for a moment. “I think not, Alice. I am choosing to remain silent, incognito. I don't wish to call attention to myself.” She waited while Alice seemed to puzzle over her answer. “Perhaps all the more reason,” Alice said. “Your silence is chosen, not imposed.” “But it would draw such attention. A bright red poppy?” “Perhaps not. What if it were not bright red?” “Not red?” “There is a white poppy, with an almost black center. I noticed some once in the window of a florist in Chicago. I was mesmerized. I turned around and went in to see them. The florist was a bit outdone with me that I did not buy even one.” Alice laughed. “But it could have all sorts of meanings for you.” “Yes, and what would those be?” “You’ve already explained why the ladies chose it for their motif. But the white poppy with the black center would be even more meaningful. All the things you’ve said---I believe I remember this correctly---plus peace.

Flowers, you who end in close affinity to the arrangers’ hands (Hands of girls then, hands of girls now), You who cover the garden table from end to end, Grown weak, gently injured, Waiting for water which revives you once more From a death already commenced - and now Again taken up between the opposing, sorting Fingers and their feeling of you, and which can so well Show you favour, give ease more than you had imagined, As you recover yourselves in a jug, Cooling slowly, and the ardour of the girls like confessions Given up by you, seeping forth like muddy and tiresome sins You committed by being plucked, - these are another tie between you, So joined in alliance by both your blossomings.

I hope you don’t mind that we’re crashing,” Wes says. “I’m trying to escape a hunting expedition. No joke. Dad thinks I’ll be more of a man if I can blow a rabbit’s head off. And my response? ‘Sorry, Dad, but as tempting as it is to obliterate Peter Cottontail first thing on a Sunday morning, I promised Camelia I’d swing by her house, because she’s been begging to abuse my body for weeks.’” “And speaking of being delusional,” Kimmie segues, “did I mention that my plan to reunite my parents was totally dumb?” She leads us into my bedroom and then closes the door behind her. “They could smell the setup before their water glasses were even filled.” “How’s that?” I ask, taking a seat on my bed. “The violinist I arranged to serenade them at the table might have been a tip-off,” she begins. “Either that, or the wrist corsage I ordered for my mom. I handpicked the begonias and had the florist deliver it right to the table.” “Don’t forget about the oyster appetizer you preordered for the occasion,” Wes adds. “Because, you know what they say about oysters, right?” An evil grin breaks out across her face. ‘I know, I know.” She sighs, before I can even say anything. “I may have gone a little overboard, but what can I say? I’m a dorkus extremus. Hence my outit du jour.” She’s wearing a Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform, a pair of clunky black glasses (with the requisite amount of tape on the bridge), and a cone-shaped dunce cap. “Yes, but you’re a dorkus extremus with a nice set of begonias,” Wes teases.

Tonight Ray will tape the the drenched oasis inside of the silver bowl that sits on the top of the candelabra and fill it with the pale green hydrangeas, pink English garden roses, lilies of the valley, and extravagant lavender sweet peas that R.L., the local florist/antique dealer, delivered a few hours ago. The flowers are all soaking in their respective sugar water jugs in her kitchen- out of the direct sunlight, of course- as is the oasis which she'll mold into every bowl and vase in the house with a similar arrangement. She's even going to make an arrangement in a flat sweetgrass basket to hang on the front door and a round little pomander of pale green hydrangea with a sheer white ribbon for Little Hilda to hold as she greets the guests in the foyer. Ray is tempted to snip the last blossoms of gardenias growing secretly behind Cousin Willy's shed. In her estimation they are the quintessential wedding flower, with their intoxicating fragrance and their delicate cream petals surrounded by those dark, waxy leaves. She bought the seedlings when R.L. and the gals weren't looking at the Southern Gardener's Convention in Atlanta four years ago, and no one has any idea she's been growing them. Sometimes she worries that the fragrance will give her away, but they bloom the same time as the confederate jasmine, which grows along the lattice work of the shed, and she can always blame the thick smell on them. It would take a truly trained nose to pick the gardenias out, and Ray possesses the trained nose of the bunch.

A flower clock?" "Yeah. Mum was... is a florist, so I'm using her books on flowers to try to re-create or, well, create Carl Linnaeus's flower clock. He was a guy from the eighteenth century. Basically, each flower in the clock opens at a different time of day." "Its petals open?" "Yeah, so flowers have circadian rhythms," Ben says. He's blushing. "I don't know. Sounds stupid now I'm saying it. And it hasn't actually worked yet either. I thought, though, that with climate change and everything, the flowers will start opening at weird times, so it kind of goes beyond everything with, you know... my mum. It'll be, like, the more we damage the world, the more we damage the clock, and time, and, yeah, the future." "That sounds beautiful, Ben," I say. "Yeah, I don't know. I mean, what am I going to do with it? What's the point of it, really? Will it go in a gallery and then be, like, sold as prints of photographs of it or something? And then the time element of it will be gone." "Hmm." "Sorry," Ben says, and he shakes his head. "I guess I'm in a bit of a crap mood." He looks at me sideways, and nervously laughs to himself. "I mean, I don't know why I just told you all that." I shake my head. "It's fine. So, what flower's time is it now?" I ask. Ben looks at his phone. "Ugh, yeah, so that's the other thing. There actually doesn't seem to be a flower for each hour, which is kind of problematic. But the closest to now is the meadow goat's beard. It opens at three." "Oh, cool," I say. "So right now doesn't exist in flower time?" "Yeah, I guess it doesn't. I've never thought of it like that.

I could have hired someone else. Someone less flawed, perhaps, or at least better at hiding it. But none of them would have had the talent you have with flowers, Victoria. It's truly a gift. When you work with flowers, everything about you changes. The set of your jaw loosens. Your eyes glaze with focus. Your fingers manipulate the flowers with a gentle respect that makes it impossible to believe you are capable of violence. I'll never forget the first day I saw it. Watching you arranging sunflowers at the back table, I felt like I was looking at a completely different girl." I knew the girl of whom she was speaking. It was the same one I'd glimpsed in the dressing room mirror with Elizabeth, after nearly a year in her home. Perhaps that girl had survived somewhere within me after all, preserved like a dried flower, fragile and sweet.

Flowers. Lots of women say they don’t want them. But every woman is happy when they get them. Which is why I’ve arranged to have them delivered to Kate’s office, every hour on the hour. Seven dozen at a time. That’s one dozen for every day we were apart. Romantic, right? I thought so too. And although I know Kate’s favorite are white daisies, I specifically told the florist to avoid them. Instead, I’ve chosen exotics—bouquets with brightly colored petals and strange shapes. The kinds of flowers Kate has probably never seen in her life, from places she’s never been. Places I want to take her to. At first I kept the notes simple and generic. Take a look: Kate, I'm sorry. Drew Kate, Let me make it up to you. Drew Kate, I miss you. Please forgive me. Drew. But after a few hours I figured I needed to step it up a notch. Get more creative. What do you think? Kate, You're turning me into a stalker. Drew Kate, Go out with me on Saturday and I'll give you all of my clients. Every. Single. One. Drew Kate, If I throw myself in front of a bus, will you come visit me at the hospital? Drew PS - Try not to feel too guilty if I don't survive. Really. That last batch was delivered forty-five minutes ago. Now I’m just sitting at my desk, waiting. Waiting for what, you ask? You’ll see. Kate may be stubborn, but she’s not made of stone. My office door slams open, leaving a dent in the drywall. Here we go. “You are driving me crazy!” Her cheeks are flushed, her breathing’s fast, and she’s got murder in her eyes. Beautiful. I raise my brows hopefully. “Crazy? Like you want to rip my shirt open again?” “No. Crazy like the itch of a yeast infection that just won’t go away.” I flinch. Can’t help it. I mean—Christ. Kate steps toward my desk. “I am trying to work. I need to focus. And you’ve got Manny, Moe, and Jack playing every cheesy eighties song ever written outside my office door!” “Cheesy? Really? Huh. I so had you pegged for an eighties kind of girl.” Well, you live and learn.

Marlboro Man and I walked together to our vehicles--symbolically parked side by side in the hotel lot under a cluster of redbud trees. Sleepiness had definitely set in; my head fell on his shoulder as we walked. His ample arms gripped my waist reassuringly. And the second we reached my silver Camry, the temperature began to rise. “I can’t wait till tomorrow,” he said, backing me against the door of my car, his lips moving toward my neck. Every nerve receptor in my body simultaneously fired as his strong hands gripped the small of my back; my hands pulled him closer and closer. We kissed and kissed some more in the hotel parking lot, flirting dangerously with taking it a step--or five--further. Out-of-control prairie fires were breaking out inside my body; even my knees felt hot. I couldn’t believe this man, this Adonis who held me so completely and passionately in his arms, was actually mine. That in a mere twenty-four hours, I’d have him all to myself. It’s too good to be true, I thought as my right leg wrapped around his left and my fingers squeezed his chiseled bicep. It was as if I’d been locked inside a chocolate shop that also sold delicious chardonnay and french fries…and played Gone With the Wind and Joan Crawford movies all day long--and had been told “Have fun.” He was going to be my own private playground for the rest of my life. I almost felt guilty, like I was taking something away from the world. It was so dark outside, I forgot where I was. I had no sense of geography or time or space, not even when he took my face in his hands and touched his forehead to mine, closing his eyes, as if to savor the powerful moment. “I love you,” he whispered as I died right there on the spot. It wasn’t convenient, my dying the night before my wedding. I didn’t know how my mom was going to explain it to the florist. But she’d have to; I was totally done for. I’d had half a glass of wine all evening but felt completely inebriated. When I finally arrived home, I had no idea how I’d gotten there. I was intoxicated--drunk on a cowboy. A cowboy who, in less than twenty-four hours, would become my husband.

Mother’s Day was born. Combining the talents of the card makers, the candy manufacturers, and the florists, Mother’s Day became the perfect rip-off. Florists had always been in the van of advertising; they had also mounted a successful campaign to remove the unhappy phrase from newspaper death notices: “No flowers by request.” It had been replaced by the far more positive—and profitable—slogan: “Say Farewell with Flowers.” In a mother-orientated nation, no son, however cynical, could refuse to send flowers on that special day; the many florists in and around Wall Street—established originally to provide the carnation boutonnieres favored by fashion-conscious brokers—did a record business during the week before the bogus anniversary. As the day drew closer, the price of blooms soared—a practice perfectly understood in the countinghouses; it was known as pushing the price as high as the market would bear. In fact, candy manufacturers saw the price of their shares rise as a result of Mother’s Day.

Despair floods the minds of unemployed beeper manufacturers, Rolex watch salesmen, and society florists.

These were her compatriots, her homegrown, armed with work: builders, florists, loaders, drivers; playing it sly so as not to let on to any shared objective, and instead just, just, just: just there to take orders.

THE GROOM, OF COURSE! Raise high the roofbeam, carpenters. The groom walks meekly down the hall. I hear the characteristic sound of a throat being cleared that does not need to be, then a polite “Excuse me,” though he is alone, fumbling with the card in the door. He enters the room, holding an arrangement of lilacs and Queen Anne’s lace: my bouquet. It is wilder and larger than I expected, the decision of a woman who craves attention. I hate it immediately. “The florist called,” he says. “She was in a state.” “So thoughtful of you to pick it up.” We hug and for a moment I am calmed by his familiar, stable bones under my grip. His thoughtfulness. “I hit a median in the parking lot but it’s okay.

Over the past decade, Christian nationalists have managed to convince many Americans that religious liberty is something that has to do with homophobic wedding cake bakers and florists. It's all about symbolic acts and offenses that cause harm only in the mind, or so many are led to conclude. We really don't get what the movement has in mind for us. What today's Christian nationalists call 'religious liberty' is in reality a form of religious privilege — for their kind of religion. But privilege is never free. It always comes at the expense of other people's rights. And the rights that are at stake here are not just about buying cakes and flowers. The ‘religious liberty’ of Christian nationalists can cost you your dignity, your health, your job, and even your life.

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Collier understood and preached this swim-with-current-rather-than-against strategy. Do not arrive as an interruption or disruption, attempting to divert your reader's attention from the object it is focused on, fighting to interest him in something different from what he is already, at this moment, interested in. Instead, align yourself with the subjects already possessing his attention, the matters already garnering his interest, the self-talk conversation already occurring in his mind, and the conversations he is already having around the water-cooler at work or at the kitchen table at home with peers, friends, and family. About this, Collier wrote: “Study your reader first — your product second…. The reader of your letter wants certain things and the desire for them is, consciously or unconsciously, the dominant idea in his mind all the time. He is also engaged by the news or events or public conversations of the day. Put yourself in his place. If you were deep in discussion with a friend over some matter and a stranger came up and said: ‘Mister, I have a fine coat I want to sell you!’ — what would you do? The same thing happens when you approach a man by mail. He is in discussion with himself. If you just butt in, will you be welcome? How would you do it if approaching him and his friend in person? You'd listen and get the trend of the conversation. Then, when you chimed in, it would be with a remark on a related subject. Then you could gradually bring the talk around logically to the point you wanted to discuss. Study your reader. Know what interests him. Listen to the conversation he is already having with himself. Enter where he already is.” There are some obvious, perennially occurring attention dominators, such as seasons and holidays, and linking to these — regardless of whether your business naturally links or not — can be extremely helpful. You need not be a florist, jeweler, or restaurant to utilize Valentine's Day, for example. Beyond that, and deeper than that, every customer group has some shared item on their minds. Know it. Start your conversation with them with it. And be sure to take advantage of one of the great advantages of today's online media, including e-mail, blogs, and social media sites — being day to day, even hour by hour, timely. You can link a marketing message to world or local, financial, or cultural news of the moment — and you should.

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once more, I am flat out on a slab of oolitic limestone, absorbing the dusk leaking blue through its tall net of branches

Blooming roses, bright orchids and pretty peonies for weddings, birthdays, anniversary, or any celebration.

member of one of our classes told of a request made by his wife. She and a group of other women in her church were involved in a self-improvement program. She asked her husband to help her by listing six things he believed she could do to help her become a better wife. He reported to the class: “I was surprised by such a request. Frankly, it would have been easy for me to list six things I would like to change about her—my heavens, she could have listed a thousand things she would like to change about me—but I didn’t. I said to her, ‘Let me think about it and give you an answer in the morning.’ “The next morning I got up very early and called the florist and had them send six red roses to my wife with a note saying: ‘I can’t think of six things I would like to change about you. I love you the way you are.’ “When I arrived at home that evening, who do you think greeted me at the door? That’s right. My wife! She was almost in tears. Needless to say, I was extremely glad I had not criticized her as she had requested.

I had stopped at a florist on my way to his apartment and bought myself an extravagant red rose for my buttonhole. Now I removed this and handed it to him. He took it like a botanist or morphologist given a specimen, not like a person given a flower. About six inches in length,’ he commented. ‘A convoluted red form with a linear green attachment.

Endiro Giansante, owner of Fawn Street Florists, descended from the store's attic where he was drying pink larkspur to find his new deliveryman, Ludis Lanka, standing near the register holding two ten-dollar bills upright in his hand. "A man came in, you were upstairs, so I took the order," he beamed proudly. "Ludis, you're a nice fellow but you're never to deal with a customer. Unless they're Latvian," he added with a smile, "in which case I'd ask you to translate." By way of confession, Ludis added, "He gave me a two-dollar tip, and reached to his pocket as if he might have to split it with Endiro. "No, keep the two dollars, but you're a delivery boy, not a salesman. Delivery man," he corrected himself, for Ludis was surely in his twenties or early thirties. He'd only been working there a few days, answering a sign in the window. God knows how the sweet fellow would survive on what he paid him, thought Endiro. He must surely live with relatives. "Es biju citur," said Ludis, which means "I was elsewhere." Not quite apropos but it was the first Latvian phrase Cliff had learned at McMasters and he'd been told he'd pronounced it well.

he’d learned that his mother rented it to a local florist in town, who apparently hand-grew

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A few doors down from the 'locally sourced' bakery there's a florist that assures you--via a hand-painted sign on its storefront window--that the flowers have been picked gently and with love, so that you can pass the love on. Meanwhile, inside, chopping the stems aggressively in front of you and saying, That'll be sixty-four eighty please.

But there is no singular 'Black Florist' experience. We have varied backgrounds, expertise, influence. And there's beauty in our diversity. The industry can be racist, of course. Do we get the same funding, gigs, press, or access that white florists do? No, but that's about white supremacist systems. Blackness itself isn't limiting; it's limitless.

Abbey told me that Paul heard that Brooke said you're dating a florist.

I’ve learned you’ve got to target the exact right woman. She’s well off enough that she hires a professional florist to decorate for her party and has a few nice pieces of jewelry that she feels comfortable enough to shove into a bathroom drawer but not so well off that there’s a safe to crack or a security system to disarm.

What are all the flowers for?” She’s smiling against my mouth. “It smells like a florist in here.” “Don’t sass me,” I growl, and she laughs.

I have spied that secret place from time to time, usually as through a glass darkly, but now and again with blazing clarity. One time it glowed from a red carnation, incandescent in a florist's window. One it shimmered in drifting pollen , once in a sky needled with ice. I have seen it wound in a scarf of dust around a whirling pony. I have seen it glinting from a pebble on the slate bed of a creek. I have slipped into that secret place while watching hawks, while staring down the throat of a lily, while brushing my wife;s hair. Metaphors are inexact. The experience is not a glimpsing of realm's beyond nor of becoming someone new, but of acknowledging briefly and utterly, who I am