Floral Design - The Architecture of Community 12-29-9

Anderson County, South Carolina

Traditionally we think of poinsettias as the de rigueur Christmas flower, despite their fiendish tendency to drop all their leaves at the slightest provocation. Long ago I decided on maintenance free holiday flower stock, buying a shopping cart full of silk poinsettias the day after Christmas when they were essentially free. I have had nary a drooping leaf in the years since and never worry about flower pots leaking onto my vintage 1978 wall to wall carpet.

Yet, sometimes convenience is not the primary consideration with respect to the use of floral materials to influence the well being of people. A silk plant in a plastic pot with several years of dusty patina discoloring the red petals does not lend itself to making someone feel special. On the other hand fresh cut long stem cadmium red roses, alizarin carnations, and iridescent poinsettia blooms can do much to influence community, even inciting commerce, as I just found out. Going to the trouble of making arrangements with fresh flowers and greens is a labor of love and the recipients will never need to get out a shop vac and vacuum dusty leaves in late August.

One of my favorite activities this time of year is loading my Toyota with brilliant red and green flower arrangements made up in an assortment of mason jars, vases, candle holders, soup bowls, and whatever else I can find hidden behind cereal boxes and Stove Top stuffing mix. Soup bowls with blocks of floral sponge are actually rather useful in making an arrangement effective enough to convince someone the universe is really friendly and that Christmas is not a secular myth.

After a bit of floral design work at the kitchen counter, ten hours of a recent Sunday were given over to making a county-wide run, leaving a contrail of red in nearly a dozen places. In fact, I did not get home until Monday about 1 AM. This may sound altruistic, but in reality I end up with a really good deal from this journey. To wit:

My sortie began with a drop of flowers in one of those little green floral vases that accrete in large numbers in church kitchen cupboards. In exchange for flowers and hot coffee, an older woman living alone in a well-kept vinyl house granted me a rather fine boneless chicken breast seasoned in a lemon marinade. My timing proved impeccable. This was going to be a prosperous expedition.

A nearby large formal brick home with classis columns proved to be rather dark and closed inside; reflecting the deep challenges this family has dealt with for several years. Flowers arranged in an empty host candle holder and a few words of encouragement proved exactly what was needed for these dear souls who have struggled to remember that dawn will come in all its radiant glory. I came away with a huge can of Santa Claus popcorn. Philanthropy does have its up side.

A recent widow has an active faith and this has seen her through a difficult time of transition, yet this active gardener can always use some extra color in her brick ranch house. One of those cheap green floral vases netted a bag of the highest quality party Chex mix I have ever encountered and two glasses of orange juice. I might need to go into doing some kind of visitation ‘work’ full time.

A little brick duplex on the north end of town has often proven a source of vast returns on my ‘investment’. It was a good thing I put extra balsam fir in with these flowers. The yield was incredible - an invitation to an immense banquet, right then and there. Once again, absolutely perfect timing. Following this experience of culinary nirvana, a long-time widow and her disabled daughter sent me home with nothing less than honey-baked ham, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, sweet potato soufflé, broccoli salad, egg dressing, chess pie, apple cake, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, in quantity. I will never ever have to shop or cook again.

Back towards the center of town is a sprawling complex of low brick buildings where hundreds of mostly older women are living out their last days. Despite a finely maintained campus, this nursing home is just not the best place to do the holidays alone. Flowers in quantity are always an antidote to some of the vast loneliness and despair that many of the residents struggle with. Even better than vast culinary largesse, are the sincere clingy hugs of gratitude for helping these women remember they are not forgotten by us here on the outside.

A non-descript ranch house near the nursing home is always shrouded in dense darkness. The three residents there have all faced neoplastic giants in their lives. They remain standing, yet so very tired. No longer able to care for their own garden, a fix of ready-made flowers is exactly what they needed. Even the darkest shadows give way to the radiance of fresh roses and carnations, scented with balsam. I passed on a grand meal; I still had more stops to make.

On the far side of town in a 1978 brick ranch with those silly skinny windows typical of the 1970s and photo-print panelling, a wheelchair bound divorcee lives, struggling to hang onto her independence. For her, flowers are a trophy. This middle-aged mother has managed to take the bitter dose of lemons in her life and add a liberal measure of sugar and produce the most succulent lemonade possible. She has always stood taller in her wheelchair than most people will ever think about doing. For my delivery of flowers today in a salvaged mason jar, I gained a jar of lupini beans and vanilla and chocolate pizzelles. Life is good.

My last stop found the Toyota nearly empty. Pushing the limits of my floral design skills, I had taken a white soup bowl, green floral oasis, red roses, carnations, poinsettia cuttings, and an admixture of cryptomerium, balsam fir, and fern and produced something fairly reasonable. It gained me admittance into the teddy bear filled house and life of one of life’s quiet saints; one who has been to medical hell and back about five times, yet still finds it in herself to make a small nephew know the universe is really friendly. For thirty-three years this school librarian provided a safe place for marginalized high school kids who never fit in with the ‘in’ crowd. I got two very cold glasses of milk, mining rights to her newly baked Christmas goodies, and a chance to hold a real teddy bear.

Will you work for community? It offers the best pay and benefits in the world. Next time you are in the grocery be sure to drop by floral and round up some provisions for your journey.