Flowers Make Friends

“Gardens are not meant to be competitive, they are meant to be shared.”
                                    -Rosemary Verey
 
I was recently reminded of one of my favorite pictures that hangs on the corkboard of our office at Naturescapes when a customer came in to our garden shop to share a story.  Kathy beamed as she told me how she cut a few of the flowers from the pot of ranunculus she recently bought.  “I put them in a little vase and gave them to my elderly neighbor.  You should have seen her face.  She was so glad to see a sign of spring!”
 
The picture in our office is of two girls, friends, around the age of ten, standing close together each with a huge bouquet of just picked daffodils in their arms.  Their heads-one with long dark hair, the other a short blond bob, poked out above the flowers.  It’s the story behind that picture that always makes me smile.
 
Several years ago, my husband a landscape designer, was consulting with a client.  While he meandered with the client around her yard discussing design ideas, the girls disappeared.
 
“Look!” the girls shouted with joy as they showed off their loot.
 
“Oh no! You picked all my daffodils!” the girl’s mom said as she threw her hands up to her cheeks.
 
My husband said the smiles on the girls faces scattered and were replaced with clenched lips of fear. 
 
Always the calming force in a storm, my husband said, “Wait, what an awesome picture!”   He asked the girls to smile and pulled out his camera.  The mother stood back, still stewing a bit, but looked at the scene through my husband’s eyes.
 
The girls’ smiles returned proudly.
 
Do you have a flower story you would like to share? Please feel free to comment below or contact me to discuss being a guest-blogger.
 
​#flowers #friends #community #healing