I’m Back!!! And just check this out.
Here’s the main cooler at the flower shop and this is what I’ve been doing with all my free time – working like a dog & up to my eyeballs in flowers.
It’s a tough job but somebody has to do it.
My sister owns Jenny’s Floral which happens to be the only flower shop in Custer, SD. When you own a flower shop, Valentines Day is really more like a whole week.
Here’s my sister – sorry, I caught her in mid sentence.
This almost looks like it could be the set for a television show. All she needs is a string of pearls and a plucked chicken and she could be the next Julia Childs.
“Next you take this red carnation and stuff it up the chickens’…”
Sorry, things get a little weird by the end of the day. I guess the whole flower/cooking show thing probably wouldn’t work out too well after all.
We do have a lot of fun and we do a lot of talking, laughing, and giggling like school girls mainly because all the girlfriends come and help.
Grandma said it best –
“Many hands make the work load light.”
She would be so proud.
Of course, we discuss important things like politics, the new tax laws, quantum physics and how to save the environment. We have also solved the world’s problems and devised a plan for world peace.
OK – I’m full of compost – we really talk about the men in our lives, our kids, the things we’ve been doing and the things we want to do. We also bring lots of food and wine and beer for after hours. That’s when all the really good discussions start. But I can’t put any of that down in black and white. I’m sure you understand. Just imagine it’s like Sex in the City without the city and the fancy shoes.
Here’s Amy. She worked for my sister back when she was in high school and she’s still willing to come and help, amazing, isn’t it?
Amy has a blog called the Ranch Wife’s Slant. She also writes articles for several papers and magazines about her life on the ranch. I think she comes just to gather warped and weird ideals for her upcoming articles. The flower shop is pretty fertile ground for ‘warped and weird’.
Here’s some more friends. Denise is slaving over a hot cash register and Kelly (in the green) was working on a balloon masterpiece – a column of white and clear balloons topped off with a very large heart-shaped balloon. It turned out pretty darn cool. This was Kelly’s first time at the flower shop. She made the mistake of walking into the shop before Valentines Day, introducing herself and even stated that she had always dreamed of working in a flower shop. She’s lucky she got out alive. I’m not sure we’ll ever see her again but you never know – she fit in really well with our strange little flock of flower groupies.
There’s usually around a dozen of us who descend on the flower shop for the big holidays like Valentines Day and Mothers Day. Most of us have been doing this for years because it’s a blast and if you don’t show up to work, you know we’ll all talk about you. Besides, where else can you spend a few days with the girlfriends and play with flowers in the dead of winter. In South Dakota your options are pretty limited.
Life is just a bed of roses – at the flower shop.
RanchDaze 
