LOOK AT THE LAURELS NOW!

Last month we handed over flowers to Jesica, the Activity Director at the Laurels, to run the program with her own crew.  The level of participation soared.  The dining room was full of residents who made both small and large arrangements.  The flowers, from The Fresh Market, delighted everyone.

So now Second Bloom delivers flowers twice a month to the Laurels, they have it on their calendar to look forward to and participation is great!  They know who wants to and needs to come out of their room to work with the flowers.  And they know who would benefit on that particular day by having flowers delivered to their room.  It’s a great change.

ROSES, ROSES, ROSES

It was a day of roses from The Fresh Markets, in both Asheville and Hendersonville.  What a delight.  And what delightful volunteers!

Both Linda and Emily managed to get a bit lost on their journey to The Laurels, but once they arrived on the scene it was full steam ahead.  Even Emily made a few arrangements, may have been a first for her.We cranked out about 80 bouquets in pretty short order, not that we were in a rush.  After all, you can’t rush art.

WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT

It was a day of beautiful flowers from The Fresh Market.  We had three volunteers, Melinda, Jackie and Lizzee, who showed up to help make over 100 bouquets for all the residents at The Laurels of GreenTree

Ridge.   Marjorie, a resident, also joined in with a couple of young interns as well.  It was quite a crew.  They worked in record time making those arrangements.

To see why we do it, just look at these photos.  Above is a photo of Pauline and Shirley.  Shirley has ‘adopted’ Pauline and they’ve become good friends.  Look at those wonderful faces.  Above is a photo of Woody.  We’ve been visiting Woody for several months now and he really enjoys seeing us and having the flowers to enjoy through the week.  The last photo is of Lisa and Betty.  Betty was getting ready to go a poetry reading and we caught her on her way out.

BRIGHT AND COLORFUL

With a Prius stuffed full with 8 buckets of flowers from The Fresh Market, we headed off to the Laurels of GreenTree Ridge.  We met up with our 3 trusty volunteers and did what we do so well - make little arrangements for everyone to enjoy!  Look at how beautiful and bright those bouquets are!  And that’s Judy who’s ready to place the final bouquet on our cart.

Mamie was in watching us all morning and she picked out this bouquet that Judy had made to have in her room.  Emily and I delivered the other 99 arrangements to everyone.  We timed it perfectly so that when we got back to the main room, everything was cleaned up and ready to go.  Below is a photo of Emily with Warren.  Want to know who else volunteered with us today?  To find out, you’ll have to click here for more photos.

We’ve been coming into The Laurels, bringing flowers, adding color and smiles to their environment for months now.  We simply show up and ‘do what we do’.  And every once in awhile we hear a great story…..like someone who knows someone there that gets the flowers and loves them!  We always know they are appreciated but it’s very fun to hear it come around at us from a totally unexpected direction!

HANDS-ON VALENTINE’S DAY

Hands-On Asheville, a non-profit that organizes volunteers, found us four and a half great volunteers for Valentine’s Day at the Laurels of GreenTree Ridge.  Here’s a great photo of Lisa (in blue) standing with Melody, Niki and Ali and her son Avery.  Seated in front amid the flowers is Marjorie, who helps us eachtime we come.  And seated in the back in red is Esau, who was overseeing what we were up to.  This photo was taken while Sarah, on the left was driving up and down Sweeten Creek Road looking for us.  But she found us in plenty of time to help make over 100 bouquets to brighten up the rooms of all the residents.  These women all had talent and we paid some attention so we could pick up some pointers and pass them along to our next volunteers.

Our flowers today came from The Fresh Market, both in Hendersonville and Asheville.  We held them over in the coldest room in my house and they did quite well.  Check out Second Bloom’s cooler.  Since we never know when we’re getting flowers or how many we’re going to get, it was great to have such an abundance for our volunteers to work with.  A great assortment of size, colors and textures.  The arrangements were beautiful.

Avery, Ali’s son and our youngest volunteer yet at age 5, made several bouquets but he seemed to like handing them out best.  Everyone loved seeing him come into their room, wishing them a Happy Valentine’s Day and leaving flowers.  He usually didn’t stay long because he was on a mission to get flowers into every room, but his gift was easily seen in the smiles he left on the residents’ faces.  Here Ali and Avery are with Lloyd.  Those flowers added some wonderful color to his room!

But Avery wasn’t the only one visiting the residents and wishing them Happy Valentine’s Day.  Here’s Niki giving Oma a beautiful bouquet.  She was delighted to have flowers again.  While Avery, Ali and Niki were wheeling their cart of flowers down one hallway, Sarah and Melody were bringing their gifts to residents on another hallway.  To the right is Melody with Charles and on the left is Sarah with Priscilla and Francis.

All of our volunteers showed up today with open hearts, smiles and a genuine willingness to engage with people.  You can see that in all of these photos.  Look at some of the others pics we took today.

TWIST AND CUT

We were fortunate to have flowers from two sources:  Blossoms at Biltmore Park donated 4 beautiful buckets of flowers and then we picked up another 4 from The Fresh Market in Hendersonville.  To the left, peepin’ out of the posies, is Judy from Fresh Market.  She and her husband love growing flowers at their home in Mills River.

What a banner day with flowers!  We chugged over to the Laurels of Green Tree Ridge where Marjorie, a resident there, was ready to jump in with the shears.  And Sally and Lizzee, two new volunteers, helped us out.  And as always, we needed it!  We were so excited about having two new volunteers that we basically forgot to take photos….oops!

Sally loves growing flowers and has seen her garden increasing in size each year.  Lizzee is a semi-retired florist from California who’s just recently moved here.  It wasn’t long into our process when we realized that Lizzee had a special technique we knew nothing about - no surprise there.  She would arrange the flowers in her hand, twisting each one as she added it in.  Then she’d clip the stems and put them right in the cup.  Done, no fuss at all.  Marjorie caught on right away.  It looked easy, but we tried it later when we went to Hospice and found it to be a bit challenging.

Some people might find it stunning to think that two people with little to no horticultural experience would decide to start a business recycling flowers.  However, I like to think that it gives us an opportunity to showcase our volunteer talent…….

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

We weren’t expecting icy road conditions.  But we got it.  So we canceled our 11 o’clock start time.  Changed it to 12:30, losing 3 volunteers in the process.  Again, unexpected.  But hey, no problem because we were at the Laurels and we had Margie.  We used flowers donated from the Terpsicorps Fundraiser on New Year’s Eve and also from Fresh Market in Hendersonville.  We stretched

the flowers out and made 88 small bouquets, enough for every resident to have in their room.  That was especially unexpected because we only had 4 buckets of flowers.  But there you go….Here’s a photo of Margie with Nancy and one of Frank with Lisa.  We spent quite a bit of time talking to Frank about Black Mountain, hearing stories.  His wife and two daughters visit him a lot - which is a wonderful blessing for him.

FLOWERS ON THE MOVE

It took until late afternoon to have enough flowers to be blooming, but look at the beautiful ones we received.  We picked up flowers in the morning from both Fresh Markets, in Hendersonville and Asheville.  And then filled up the back of the truck with flowers from the Biltmore House.  We headed over to The Laurels of Green Tree Ridge and met our three volunteers for the day:  Judy, Fred and Jackie.  They teamed up with Marjorie and we put them all right to work making 100 floral arrangements for every resident to have one.  It’s a delight to work with beautiful flowers and be as creative as you dare.  These volunteers held nothing back!  Look at the delight that just one of the residents shows.  It’s a picture of Myrtle with Jackie.  Myrtle loves the flowers we bring and even if she’s napping a bit when we come in, she lights up with a big smile, grateful words and makes sure we place them where she can easily see them.

FRIDAY’S FANTASTIC RIDE

It was a triple play today, in three separate innings. We started out with flowers from Boots at Black Mountain Floral Center and Earth Fare.  Yesterday Boots hijacked a truck full of flowers for us at the end of their run.  It was great!  Enough flowers for us to go to Magnolia Health Care Center first thing in the morning.  There were poinsettias everywhere at Magnolia so we made some large bouquets for their dining room tables, activity room and nursing stations.  You can see Nanette helping us out in the photo above.  We finally got to meet her son Mike and his wife as they came to take her out for the afternoon.  Then we were off to Fresh Market to see Louise and pick up some more flowers from her.  So who do we see in Fresh Market?  Check out the photo of Nanette, Mike and Louise.  Mike used to be the manager at Fresh Market so Mike and Louise already knew each other.  What a small world!  But we had to keep moving….we had flowers to deliver now to The Laurels of Green Tree Ridge.  Fortunately Marjorie was there to help us fill the 88 cups full of flowers and hand them out to the residents.  Marilyn, in the photo to the right, was one of the happy recipients.  She loves the baby’s breath so she chose an arrangement that had a lot of them.  Then off we went again - we don’t have ‘Flowers on the Move’ as our tag line for nothing.  We picked up 8 buckets of gorgeous flowers from the Biltmore House - look at those colors!  Nothing quite like it.  But what to do with them?  Well, we moved along to The McCune Center.  And although most of our help was out Christmas shopping, both Louise and Weezie were there to lend a hand.  We managed to spill several cups of water on the floor as we delivered out beautiful floral arrangements to the residents, but everyone was happy to get them and happy to help us mop up the place.  Three facilities in one day - a new record for us!  Something only to repeated with more volunteers…..

HAPPINESS IS CONTAGIOUS

I just read about a paper being published today in a British medical journal concluding that happiness may be contagious - and that people can pass on their happiness even to total strangers.  Isn’t it great when science tells us something that we already know?  They say the effect can last up to one year.  So just think of the effect Second Bloom is having on everyone we meet!  Not only are we bringing flowers, which in and of themselves promote well-being and smiles (Rutgers study of the emotional effect of flowers, more scientific confirmation if you need it ) but because we are genuinely happy, we are having a double effect on people!  Just look at the effect of our flowers on Rhonda, Wendall and Nanette.  They’re totally loving it.  In the photo to the right Wendall’s looking like he’s helping Nanette, but let me tell you - in the flower arena, Nanette needs no help.  She put together most of the 110 small floral arrangements for the residents at Magnolia all on her own.

Today we had a lot of flowers, from both Fresh Market and The Biltmore Estate.  With so many flowers we were able to go to two big facilities:  The Laurels of Green Tree Ridge and Magnolia Healthcare Center.  At The Laurels we arrived during lunch hour so we missed out on getting Marjorie to help us.  But we did get to visit with Marilyn who came in while we made the arrangements for the residents.  She likes to visit the bird that lives in the activity room and she loves flowers, always choosing a beautiful bouquet for her room. Marjorie came in as we were just finishing up.  That room exudes cheerfulness when we’re there.  The staff usually stops in and someone always talks about how important the flowers are for the residents.  I went into William’s room and he said, ‘It’s a blessing what you do for us with these flowers.  I love to look at them.’  Such a simple thing and yet such a rippling effect of, what I’ll call today, happiness.  So come and join us - get contagious!

THE FASTEST SHEARS IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

As far as flower arranging in a small cup is concerned, I was under the illusion that I could ‘cut and stuff’ with the best of them.  But that was before I sat at a table with Marjorie.  She was quicker with a pair of shears than anyone who’s ever helped us at Second Bloom, and that’s saying something. She created beautiful bouquets of roses for the residents at The Laurels of Green Tree Ridge!  Marjorie is a resident at the Laurels and always there with a ready smile and a desire to help.  They put her to work whenever they can - she was making the rounds, delivering mail to the other residents as we were leaving.

Today we were again fortunate to receive flowers from Fresh Market.  This time we collected three large buckets full of roses. Those roses provided immense joy and beauty to the residents of the Laurels.  As someone said to us when we were handing out the flowers:  ‘They are so beautiful.  Flowers just make me smile.’  Kudos to Fresh Market for donating to us on such a regular basis!

LOOK AT THAT FACE!

When you donate to Second Bloom, here’s the result in pictures! These are just a few of the residents from Magnolia Health Care Center and The Laurels of Green Tree Ridge in Asheville and The McCune Center and Highland Farms Retirement Community in Black Mountain. Priceless!

A BLOOMIN’ GOOD DAY FOR US

Our day started out with a call from Fresh Market so we went over and picked up 4 buckets of flowers from Louise.  From there we went down to the Biltmore House and Betsey Baker wheeled out buckets of flowers.  It was a good thing we decided to take the truck and not the Prius.  In no time we had it full.  Anyone out there got a van for us???

With so many flowers the call went out for HELP!  We got a hold of Jackie (a return volunteer), who came to our aid at The Laurels of GreenTree Ridge.  Jackie’s in the photo above on the right, the floating head above the flowers belongs to Lisa.   Jackie helped us cut and stuff over 100 small bouquets.   Woody, a resident at the Laurels, was one of our many grateful recipients.  We blanketed the entire place with flowers, one for every resident, large bouquets for the nurses stations and front desk and a few for some of the staff to take home.  It was a bloomin’ good day!

VINTAGE-COLORED ROSES

Another beautiful display of flowers from a wedding held at the Biltmore Estate and created by The Bloom Room.  We took these rich, spectacular roses and hydrangeas over to The Laurels of GreenTree Ridge today.  We met some delightful people there.

Donna helped us distribute some of the flowers and here is a photo of her introducing us to Dorothy.  We also saw Margaret and Armead in the sun room - we’d met them last time we were at The Laurels.  They’re good friends and roommates - Armead was thrilled when she realized that the arrangement was for her.  And that they could actually take their flowers to their room.  These flowers brought smiles and delight to everyone we met!

LAURELS OF GREENTREE RIDGE TURN BLUE

This was our first showing at GreenTree Ridge.  We’d picked up some flowers from a wedding where the main color was blue.  Whites were added that really made the blues pop!  It was a very interesting effect.  The flower arrangements were originally made by The Bloom Room, but once in the hands of Second Bloom they were ‘Flowers On The Move’ - going from vases to trays in the back of a truck to table tops to different vases where they finally rested.  We made about 10 large arrangements for the dining room, sitting room and nurses’ stations.