The Mortality of Flowers

No one loves flowers more than I do. I love them so much that I get them for myself and frequently for others (I even had my 3-year-old grandson pick out a bouquet at Farmer's Market on Saturday...it was red of course). The entire time they are plucky and cheerful I feel good about them and they keep my spirits up but the minute the droops begin, I have to battle the down mood I begin to experience. If I were smart, I'd plant more cutting-type flowers in my garden but those are the types of plants I typically kill so that hasn't seemed to work out.

As it is, the minute I've had to toss one, I want to be able to replace it. However, I've also learned there are good places to shop for flowers and very bad places to shop for flowers. Safeway being my most recent disaster where the bouquet stunk to high heaven when I got it unwrapped and all the mums started to fall apart at a mere touch. Rotten! Fred Meyer isn't much better and Albertson's is a joke. However, Trader Joes has yielded mixed results. The best by far is New Seasons, actually that's only second best to a florist's shop and actually the Farmer's Market is very good as well. Just in case anyone wants to know.

When I see flowers start to droop like the Gerbera daisies in front of me as we "speak", it makes me feel sad similar to how I feel about the stuffed animals left on the aisle floors of department stores after Christmas. Clearly the rejects of the bunch.

I don't know why those abandoned stuffed animals make me sad but they do, I think maybe I'm subconsciously attributing actual personalities to them, like they care. Who knows, maybe flowers and stuffed animals are all valid signs of depression...nah! I just need to establish boundaries around what I should care about and what I shouldn't. These things definitely fall outside those boundaries but how do you change a lifetime of behavior? When the sensitivity gene was handed out, I was given seconds, possibly even a third helping. Pitiful.