Mark’s Bloomin’ Journal

Miami, in the less than salubrious vicinity of the airport ostensibly for a little bit of business followed by a bittersweet weekend of unbridled revelry at the Sonesta Beach Resort Key Biscayne. The Sonesta is/was an institution on The Key for the past thirty seven years, for the “Key Rats,” for those from Miami-Dade wishing an escape to the beach on a steamy day in town or a moonlight evening of tropical breezes, and for the thousands from up and down the eastern seaboard, visiting as tourists, convention attendees or as wedding parties. This was not just a hotel, this was home away from home to many, the local watering hole for others, a playground for their offspring and a treasured occupation for so many employees. Although I discovered it and used it myself as a stop over between Quito, Ecuador and Portland, Oregon on many occasions its real claim on me is as the place my wife and I were first introduced. The Sonesta Beach Resort Key Biscayne, as of this writing is no more. (more…)

Finally, the questions come down the phone line: “Would you like to play golf? Can you even play golf?” For some reason or other there is a commonly-held idea that business people spend their lives playing golf, the greens being the place of deal making. Not so at Flowerbud. This call has taken eight years to come, twenty-five years if you count Heron Bulb Farms, and while our deals always seem to be made surrounded by greenery, our growers would prefer that we not stand on their fields.

Honestly, any earlier and the call would have been premature; I first picked up a golf club a year ago and have been seen on a golf course no more than a dozen times. FedEx was now inviting me to go play at Pumpkin Ridge here in Oregon. What the heck, it is long past time for my humble little bag and its $50 set of clubs to make its way around something other than the par 3 municipal course in Lake Oswego. With no small amount of trepidation and a heavy dew on the ground it is time to go and see how the game is played. (more…)

There are a couple of stories currently appearing in the news that make next to no sense. While they are not of wordly importance to many, a very worldly event crept into the picture just today to further the nonsense.

There is a movement afoot to add more and more shopping malls within airports as at the very same time a few of the airlines are finally pushing back on a public that insists on carrying gross amounts of non-essential stuff on board aircraft. Given that what the public already carts around on trips grotesquely fails to fit into that woefully neglected but lovingly chromed measuring device by the boarding gate, why are they being sold more stuff in this cluttered environment?

Into exactly which bag are they going to stuff it, and is it into the bin above my seat that they are going to cram that bag? You know they are, and you know that while I am in row seventeen they are in row forty two and have items stuffed into bins between the two points!

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This was a weekend dominated by yellow. Yellow wrist bands, yellow tablecloths, a yellow light show wash on the walls within the Tiger Woods Pavillion on the Nike campus, yellow rain ponchos on the volunteers and of course Flowerbud’s own contribution: the beautiful yellow roses, fresh in from Costa Rica.

A lot of yellow to be sure but not a jaundiced moment as I stand at the finish line after my own ride, beneath the galloping neon horses at Delta Park in Portland watching the most determined and remarkable people cross the finish line, yellow Rose in hand. All are survivors or are surviving cancer and have just completed walks, runs or cycle rides of distances up to one hundred miles. The momentum to the day of course being given by Lance Armstrong himself, hopping on a bike and leading this most determined of pelotons eastwards into the breezy mouth of the Columbia River Gorge.

This is the year’s second in a series of events known as Livestrong Challenges. In 2006 they traverse the country as follows: Orange County in June, Portland in July, Denver in August, and Philadelphia in September, all culminating in Austin with The Ride For The Roses in October. The proceeds going to The Lance Armstrong Foundation which works to benefit those living with and through cancer.

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