Mark’s Bloomin’ Journal

Another string of Boeing 757’s in Delta livery, whisk me via Salt Lake City to Orlando, FL and back to Portland in approximately 50 hours. As much as I would grumble about airlines this was nothing more than a flawless repeat of all the hundreds of trips Delta has flown for me over the past decade. The only worthwhile observation being that the ticket price has soared whether in mileage or cash as at the same time comfort and amenities have continued their crash and burn spiral.

As many times as I have been to Florida it has almost always been along one coastline or another so the featureless green and watery flatness that is the center of the state has never really been a part of my thinking….at least not since I was briefly in Tallahassee for Jeb’s inauguration which seems eons ago and long before there was serious talk of competing with the Chinese (working on a Cuban license) in drilling for oil off the coastline. If two and three buck gas did not do that then four buck gas most certainly has the dialogue started. I guess that indicates that even the Subaru crowd are feeling the pinch.(Not really surprising as a quick fact finding foray indicates even they only get about 20mpg…hardly the measure of green frugality!)

From the 17th floor of the Rosen Center all I can see is an endless green that eventually melds with sky blue, dotted with puffy whites. The green flatness sprouts clay colored hotel towers, ribbons of highway and the painted coasters and towers of a myriad amusement parks…something like giraffe necks sticking up above a savanna’s Acacia trees. From an aircraft only, can one see that the green ground represents maybe only 70 percent of the landscape, the rest being ponds, lakes and ditches stretching towards Coco Beach and the Space Center at Canaveral. From the sealed bedroom window I imagine that I too can see the curvature of the earth.

Super Floral is where the USA’s largest floral buyers, the Costcos, WalMarts, the FTD’s and a million and one grocery chains go to place the big orders that keep the big growers happy for the coming year. Along with the ( I know it is hard to believe) real flowers there is booth after booth of all the crap that we doubtless have Chinese workers slaving (as seen in last months depressing feature “China”) over for a few bucks a month while inhaling lord only knows what life shortening fumes. The balloons, the plush, the faux wreaths, the faux baubles, the faux flowers even. Miles of ribbon and tons of pottery, tin buckets and wooden roses. Everything but everything that seems to be associated with flowers to the extent that the flowers themselves might become secondary. After all flowers are perishable, a pain in the ass!

More than ever I appreciate Flowerbud’s green box and our adherence to it carrying nothing but fresh flowers, sometimes a vase and very rarely an absurdly small box of a chocolatiers expensive tastes. There is no room for “plush” in the green box and the only thing that might be remotely inflated in there is my opinion on the certainty of our value proposition. As I march up one aisle and down another in the amazing structure that is the Orange County Convention Center I count my blessings as I honestly don’t know what I would do with all this stuff. Make a ton of money with it I suppose, if the lunch time talk by the voluble Jim McCann of 1-800 is anything to go by at all. At a billion bucks a year he can’t be all wrong. I’ll be damned If it doesn’t go against my better judgment though, to say nothing of my taste.

This floral convention is not like the ones I have the fortune to attend in Latin America or in the Netherlands. Those, while surely regulated as to those that can attend are always far more vibrant, packed and exciting…even in the days before the general public is allowed to swarm in and ooh and aah over what we flower peeps have come up with. Because this is for the really big fish it seems very quiet, eerily so. I guess there are not that many really big fish out there! As some of the merchants tell me they only need one big purchaser a year to make it all work, beyond that they are blessed.

Being something of a Curious George and finding myself trawling past bored people with eyes beginning to glaze it becomes readily apparent that one need only glance sideways at a girl from Colombia, a guy from Taiwan, a couple from Fallbrook and they will pounce in anticipation of a conversation, any conversation. With fishing poles ready and hooks suitable baited the angling is fun. It amuses me that people who know that you are not a likely candidate for their product will chat in fascination of what you do while others that really should be paying attention to your words, because you are in fact sure their product has validity for you, don’t understand it and allow their eyes to wander rudely to more “likely” targets even as you speak. When that switch happens it does not matter what you have to sell, you are not ever going to sell it to flowerbud. Some of these sales hacks have been around the industry way too long and are blind to the newcomers, new ideas and sorely needed new directions.

Not only is is flat and green it is hot. Not is it merely hot, it is sticky hot. Toss in thunder and lightening and rains enough to float a beached whale and the walk from the motor coach to Margaritaville within the grounds of Universal Studios theme park is a warm, wet affair. The namesake drink on rocks, with salt sees everybody happy enough to chat, to eat, to play at the crab racing and listen to a parrot head singing the seductions of carefree island life. Just one more for the road, after all the alarm does not go off until 4.20AM and Delta seats 18F & 18F hold little allure at this moment. They do however, in a mere six flying hours glide me across the south, the mid west, the west and on into the pacific north west, ever so gently down the Columbia River from the Dalles dam to Sauvie Island on a left down wind, a base leg over The Pumpkin Patch and a final approach aimed right at Mt Hood. Nothing flat here, nothing hot here and already I can feel myself slowing down.