The Subject is Roses

i reunited with some childhood friends last week. every year at the same time we get together and celebrate our friendship. these are girls i've known more than half my life and they are some lovely ladies. it's bittersweet to see them. we take that trip down memory lane, tinkering with the past, it's joys, it's disappointments as well as it's triumphs. eventually we come around to where we stand currently in our lives. asking where did the time go ? and knowing full well that it goes in that blink of an eye. we tell ourselves how lucky we are to have survived and to still be a part of the story.

friendship is a funny thing. so much gained and so much lost in this department over the years. many blessings and tough lessons all round. i'm grateful for it all. it's taught me a lot about who i am and more importantly who i choose to be. surround yourself with good ones. the ones that you lift you higher than the sky. it took me a long time to make these choices and i still fall into the occasional traps now and again. only now i'm much better at recognizing the gems and leaving the nonsense behind.

nothing really prepares you for life when you're young. it's not until you've done some living that you are able to be more discerning and more thoughtful and more forgiving. it is not always easy to look at the trail you've left behind and what you could have done differently, one way or another. it is, however, easy to get caught in the undertow and the challenge is finding your way clear and then eventually a way through.

i'll be cutting roses for my july wedding in two weeks from a friend's garden. lucky to have her and her bed of roses.

summer here we go...

// xx

"self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. when we focus on ourselves, our world contracts and our problems and preoccupations loom large. but when we focus on others, our world expands. our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action." ~d. golman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

TED TALK {Compassion and the true meaning of empathy}



various rose images via pinterest 

Start Where You Are

i remember when i first started working with flowers how every stem i touched seemed to hold such spiritual significance. it really was an awakening of sorts. i had been far too busy. too busy working for other people and trying to make my way and succeed in a corporate culture. the only place i ever really had known. when i spent my first spring then summer a few years back learning about flowers, their personalities, their quirks and their healing power i remember thinking how had i lasted so long in a world so void of feeling. nature held the key to my salvation. only why had it taken so long for me to take notice?

working with flowers has taught me more about myself than the world of advertising ever did. however fruitful those years. filled with hard work, fun and excess and the occasional debauchery, there was always something missing. i remember the first few months of composing flower arrangements with pure enthusiasm. it came so naturally. like they had been waiting for me all along. 

the flowers eventually became a business. one i'm quite proud of. this new venture of course presented it's own set of challenges not much different from the world of business i once knew. but now this was my own and there was a lot more riding on it than before. a few years in the mix and i am a seasoned floral designer with lovely work to show for it. i have learned some tough lessons along the way. just like the ad world, it is unrelenting at times. the business of flowers is very different than the flowers themselves. 

today, i think back to that first season working with flowers. before the onslaught of consultations and proposals, load-ins and breakdowns, spread sheets and profit margins. before i knew too much and then realized i know so little. before the hustle and the bullshit. especially the bullshit. it was magic minus the numbers. it was freedom without the worry. it was personal achievement before measured success. for a brief moment it was pure bliss. 

but without the before there would be no after. flowers gave me the business. and the insight and the perspective. and combined with some smarts i've given it a go. what will it look like, where will it lead and how far will it go? in my heart of hearts it doesn't really matter as long as i'm there. this much i know, for the flowers tell me so.

/ / xx

I am sure it is everyone’s experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not...know we knew. ~w.h. auden