The Most Beautiful Flowers In The World

Today we received a bouquet of flowers from Martin Drake, a company my husband has worked with for many years.  In the past, they've sent chocolates, which were always appreciated and eaten by all the members of our family.   So when I came into the house today to see the lovely, expansive bouquet on our dining room table, I was pleasantly surprised to hear it was from Martin Drake to our family for the holidays.

At dinner tonight my husband had put my daughter's plate in front of her.  She has very little vision remaining in her eyes so he was telling her where each of her food items was located, ("the broccoli is in the top left, the ham is to the right, potatoes are in the front left and green beans are in the right back").   While he was doing this I took a look at the flower arrangement.

When my husband was done describing the food locations to my daughter I said, "after you're done eating, I want you to feel the flowers.   This is the most interesting bouquet I've ever seen."   It was interesting because it was so very tactile.   It wasn't the colors, it was the textures; it was the shapes.

I don't normally post lots of pictures of the same thing, but in this case, I'm going to, because the arrangement was like a treasure hunt of textures.   There were soft things in deeper and harder things further out.  There were dense roses in one spot and little mushroom-shaped things that weren't mushrooms at all.  There were huge Gerber daisies and similar in size but different in feel than the sunflower om the top.   There were things that felt like Queen Ann's Lace but weren't.   And there were twenty other things I had no idea about.

There was treasure after treasure for my daughter in this bouquet.  Not just flowers, there were leaves that were different.   There were stems.   There was mossy stuff and fluffy things.  There was so much more than just flowers in this arrangement.

Aunt Jo and I tried to come up with names of things in the arrangement but many of them we couldn't label.   My daughter didn't mind, we all tried to describe them.   Some things we were able to describe to my daughter in other ways.  For instance, she thought the magnolia leaves felt fake.   I asked her if she knew of the place we parked at school where we went around in a small circle before stopping the car and getting out?   I told her in the center of that circle was a magnolia tree and the next time we were there I'd let her get out and feel a whole tree of those strange feeling leaves.

I had to run off to start the bath but I left my daughter at the table with the arrangement.   My daughter came in later, exuberantly happy like I haven't seen her in a while.   She said, "Mom, those are the most beautiful flowers in the world!"

I have to agree, I think it's my favorite arrangement ever.   So thank you from our whole family to Martin Drake for the lovely holiday gift of the most beautiful flowers in the world.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son has a bit of a cough today.   His teacher said to get rest, eat well and be ready for the trip to Fort Fisher tomorrow.   My son took her advice seriously and went to sleep early tonight, taking some cough medicine so he would get a good night's sleep before his early morning departure tomorrow.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter found one flower she said felt "like wet gummies" in the flower arrangement from Martin Drake.  I didn't know what she was referring to because I couldn't see anything that looked like what she was describing.   And then it hit me—she was feeling that florists foam that's dark green and holds loads of water.   She was reaching in and touching it and wondered what it was.   I told her it felt really neat and went squish and kept water in the plants so they lived longer.