Yes, we had a lot of flowers and a lot of blooming activity.  Three volunteers helped the morning move right along.  Pat, Peggy and Melinda joined Second Bloom today at Courtyard.  Peggy’s here on the left.  Pauline, a resident at Courtyard, was ready to go before we arrived, waiting almost patiently.  She made bouquet upon bouquet and was pretty spent by the time we wheeled our carts down the halls.  But she had a fabulous time!

At first I wasn’t sure we’d have enough flowers, so we were doing ‘light and airy’ arrangements, but the last 25 cups were stuffed to the gills.  I only heard delight as we delivered the arrangements to the residents.  True, most people had gone to lunch, but I knew they would be delighted when they returned to their rooms and saw the bright bouquets.  We did find Octavia getting ready to go to lunch and got a great photo of her with Melinda and Pat.  We  had so many flowers that we made arrangements for the main dining hall and for a lot of the staff as well.  Where did all these flowers come from?

Well, we got great donations of flowers from Clements Flower Shop and from The Fresh Market.  Beautiful post Valentine’s Day flowers.  There were deep reds, pinks, whites and yellows.  Absolutely beautiful.  When you work with such fabulous flowers, your arrangements will always look beautiful.  Not that we don’t have talent…..because we do……….but the flowers definitely help.  It can be a bit daunting to look at 6 big buckets of flowers for the first time, wondering how we’re going to get from that to 120 bouquets in small, rather tiny cups.  But it always seems to work out.  And once we get going, everyone joins in.  Even I’ve learned a thing or two.

Recognize who that is behind the flowers?  Recognize the nice fingernail polish?  And don’t stop now - see more photos of our volunteers.