Stop the (flower) bus!
Have I ever told you how exciting the life of a Flower Friend is? I know, I know, but this week exceeded all previous levels of flowery excitement 🙂
It started on Tuesday, when I met lovely parent volunteers Jane and Kirsty at the Greenspace in Salusbury School, Queens Park, which has agreed to donate flowers and foliage they already grow. Thank you Greenspace! And if we’re lucky, we might even persuade their new gardener to help the children grow flowers especially for Flower Friends. Watch this space!
The action continued on Wednesday on my way back from collecting flowers from Harlesden Town Garden. Feeling rather tired and keen to practice our environmentally friendly ethos, I opted to pop onto the 266 bus back to Willesden rather than get a taxi. As it was packed to the bus equivalent of the rafters I found a spot near the exit door next to a young woman, who interupted her phone call to tell me how much she loved the philadelphus, geranium, iris, shepherds’ purse, rose, allium, pittosporum, viburnum, alkanet, grasses, forget-me- not etc.etc. that she could see in my bucket.
Next minute all hell broke loose as she diverted her attention to warn the driver at top octave not to drive down Church Street, as it was market day. Milliseconds and a sharp veer later, tragedy was averted for passengers, shoppers and driver alike. Phew! Thank you, lovely woman, whoever you are…
Well, you ask, could my week have got any more eventful? Of course it did!
I arrived at the Brent Mencap garden in anticipation of an action packed session with members of the gardening group, who are helping us grow sweet peas, cosmos, delphiniums, amaranthus, shasta daisies and all manner of other floral delights to bring love and joy into the lives of the vulnerable in our communities.
As usual we spent the first few minutes debating those angsty horticultural dilemmas. When should we plant out the oriental poppies? Is it warm enough to plant the dahlia tubers? Is it too late to sow the wild flower bed? Questions, questions. Thankfully, trusty gardening guru and Wellbeing Manager, Ian, had the answer to all. We’ll never know until we give it a go, he said, with his usual airy certainty.
My floral week ended taking my grandson home from school once we’d delivered flowers to disabled residents in the area and I once again contemplated the meaning of flowers and how important they are. In answer to his question about why I was so easily distracted by the blooms in every garden we passed, I said, “Why, because flowers are everything, of course!” He rolled his eyes :)).
