The Bouquet Bar I Used to Avoid

I want to tell you about a bouquet bar I used to avoid like the plague.

Years ago, back when I had a desk job, I’d go to a food hall for lunch near my office. There was a little flower cart in there, a DIY bouquet bar where you were supposed to walk up, pick your own stems, and put a bouquet together yourself.

I never once stopped.

I wanted to. But I didn’t know the names of anything. I didn’t know what went with what. I was sure that whatever I picked would look wrong, and that the woman behind the cart would be too kind to say so.

So I’d keep my eyes down and walk past, every time, kinda wishing I had some flowers.

I think about that woman a lot now. And I think about how, when Peter and I started farming flowers, I was certain about one thing above everything else: I never wanted anyone to feel the way I felt walking past her. Like flowers were a thing other people knew how to do, and I didn’t.

I didn’t know it then, but that conviction had a source. That came from my mom.

She wants everyone around her to feel like they’re part of something. She’d never let someone stand on the outside, wondering if they were welcome.

I didn’t realize I was carrying that until I started running a flower business and noticed it was the loudest principle I had. Flowers should feel accessible. Stems shouldn’t intimidate anyone. If you don’t know the names yet, that’s fine. We’ll tell you.

That’s her, working through me.

A child carries their mother in them, whether anyone’s looking for it or not. The way she loved them shows up in how they love other people, how they build things, who they let in. You don’t have to point to it. It’s just there, in the shape of who they became.

Our bouquets work the same way. What we put into them isn’t always visible at first glance, but once you know what went in, you can’t unsee it. The care is in the bloom.

Both of our moms are woven into our weeks now. My mom takes our son to school and to baseball games when we’re at market. Peter’s mom moved here to be closer, spends Fridays with him, and is the first to roll up her sleeves on the farm when we need it, banana bread and cookies in tow.

Neither of them batted an eye when we told them we were going to farm flowers. They raised us to make the next right decision and trusted us to make it. And now they’re here, helping us live the life they trusted us to choose.

We get to celebrate them, and whoever shaped you the way ours shaped us.