Archive for the ‘Flowers’ Category

St V’s advice. Knowing your roses…@$129 for 25! Knowing your woman… priceless!

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008

What time of the year is it? Well, it’s time to write a Valentine’s Day article, you know the kind, where I enlighten you on Valentine’s roses and other suitable Valentine’s Day flowers…even as I watch the New York Giants battle the New England Patriots, Super Tuesday is mere hours away and the climatic conditions around Flowerbud’s growing regions and major delivery areas are a little less than conducive for a peaceful afternoon of chips, dip and overwrought commercials. Oregon is already 6″ above normal for rain fall (18″ in last 60 days) and if we get any more mountain snow it may well become our major export. Most of coastal California is inundated with rains and unusually cool weather and snow in drifts is about to re visit the Sierras.

This means that carefully scheduled V Day flower crops are dragging their feet. Likewise in Ecuador and Colombia there is a surplus of rain and cool weather in the growing regions. It is beginning to appear that excess will be no great problem this year. Taking that in stride I look further east and see that Chicago is storm bound and New York City is its usual frigid self…and Memphis? (more…)

Cartagena…The shady side of the street.

Saturday, October 6th, 2007

Sweating as if starring in a commercial for a sports drink…is this town behind its fortified walls. I fair not one drop better sitting in a lovingly, if only modestly refurbished colonial house dating back to the early 1600’s that is at least twenty times longer than it is wide. It is entered by a very large arched doorway, off a narrow street, off a lovely square, where locals are playing board games and chatting as all the while some body part or other keeps time to one or more of the competing latin rhythms wafting around the streets. This house has dark places and only slightly more light places, arches and alcoves, running water in numerous courtyards and ballustrade after ballustrade decorated landing and window. Dark wood louvres cover every window…and all are closed.

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Flowers-Oh My! (in a Texas drawl)

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

What follows here is an email in its entirety from one Sally Reed of Cypress Mills, TX. Sally is a “volunteer” fixture within the Lance Armstrong Foundation and can always be found on the Challenge’s finish lines handing out roses to survivors. Last week Sally was in Philadelphia for 07’s first LanceArmstrongChallenge and awaiting our large shipment of yellow roses fresh in from Quito, Ecuador via Miami. A mechanical failure on a FedEx jet saw the roses in Virginia and eventually in New Jersey. Every place but Phily! A very hard days work from Flowerbud and FedEx finally saw the roses offloaded from the failed aircraft and privately couriered to Phily in the middle of the night where Sally was waiting to prepare thousands of roses.

I might add this is a delight to publish in light of the prior posting and the miserable soul that prompted it. I really do like this job!!

Dearest of Dear people, Mark Hayes, Marcy and Andrea of Flowerbud.com, and now our new precious
Marcy of Fed Ex…and everyone in the continuum that put their hearts and
souls into this “Happening”:
I don’t even have the words to tell all of you the impact of what your
concerted efforts brought about but I will tell you some stories: (more…)

As seen@14…Andean Roses

Friday, June 22nd, 2007

This is just wrong, this getting up at 3.30AM. No way is this enough sleep…to go anywhere on, let alone PDX airport and then another airport and onto yet another airport somewhere, someplace halfway down the globe. But then I have invited it upon myself as for a few years I have angled for a trip to Quito, especially if it falls during the school year! Delta’s middle seats are no better than awful, especially when the people sitting either side of you ooze both over and under the seat arms and into your already meager space. It really is too bad that at the very last second an alert ticket agent (who, doing the math at five in the morning finds me five months shy of being age enough to take my assigned seat in the exit row…despite my being near six feet tall and far more athletic than the portly sloth now assigned to it). Portland recedes and Atlanta approaches and then comes Quito but only after being treated to a beautiful sunset as we transect the Florida Keys above Islamorada (more…)

Good Housekeeping. Good Business

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

My kind of a day, being the last day of the month, on the cusp of Mother’s Day and the May issue of Good Housekeeping giving us a much appreciated accolade. It is to be found on page 130, in a section titled “The Goods”. The long and the short of it being that GHRI tested four big name delivery services with the help of consumer panelists and Mille Fiori Flowers in NYC. Purchasing bouquets as similar as possible and within the same price point the article concludes with the following;

Bottom Line: The only service we recommend is Flowerbud.com. Its bouquets arrived in good condition and lasted for seven days.

Short, sweet and to the point. I love it, while at the same time thinking I might give my eye teeth to know the identity of the three also rans. Remember, my mission is that you do not have to find out!