Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Ms.Malibu

Friday, August 13th, 2010

Seriously now, I think the executive along with the rank and file of the UAW should rise up and be reliably counted upon to use Flowerbud.com as their one and only source of fresh cut flowers in all seasons and for any, all and no particular reason at all. I am after all about to weave yet another fine product from General Motors into a hectic day and a story of approval that at one time would have ranked as quite out of character for me. In ‘Vase Runner’ I lauded their behemoth Suburban on a marathon run and now I find myself waxing on about a plain vanilla sedan that seems to have entered the market place to little fanfare, perhaps because it coincided with “The General” slipping into “Government Motors” and their over reaching, overdrive gear.

Whatever. It’s comfortable seat and serenely quiet interior still lie a thousand miles south of a warm bed and another 4 am PDX trek. My car parks ( it knows its own way ) at blue R7, the Rosetta Stone experiment that is the bus from economy parking to the terminal is as punctual as ever and of course my considerable monetary infusion to Alaska Airlines goes a long way in aiding all the free flying enjoyed by airline staff and families, not to mention allowing just the odd day of work for those with inordinate seniority. Numerous days away from the job being essential to the storing up of sufficient surliness and bile that qualifies one to be cabin crew, and whoo hoo, even the beer in hand emergency slide operator on more than a few of today’s airlines. Just this week I was chatting with a Delta Platinum passenger who in three months of enthusiastic looking over some 60,000 miles had yet to find a cabin crew member who had earned one of the accolades that Delta HQ wants their premium passengers to award to staff for simply doing their job with pleasant and helpful demeanor. You would not accept that of your pizza delivery person and yet after dropping hundreds and perhaps thousands for a plane fare you get to take it from any number of personnel attached to the aircraft… and keep mute.

I manage a fairly cheery and donation free pass through the TSA while trying hard not to envision enhanced and enlarged images of athletes foot fungus, as shoes off , I work my way to the point where we all hitch up our pants or skirts and look either embarrassed, relieved, guilty or feign being too cool for school. Bear in mind this is PDX and there are an awful lot of Birkis, Danskos, Tevas and Keens alighting from Light Rail or the latest hybrid vehicle combusting soy lattes, switch grass ethanol or ( coming soon & no doubt with a tax subsidy ) methane, from the plentiful by product of dogs eating holistic dog food and being pushed in strollers to “doggy parks”… to then be shed by the barefoot on the grubby carpet. Few in the pudgy, white and tatted throngs look very athletic. So maybe there is a measure of  safety in that? I am fervently and perhaps visibly praying that my ‘Smart Wool’ socks are at least smart enough to stave off any such floor level malignancies. I proceed on to the gate and discover I am blessed with a most opportune upgrade to the comfy seats up front and the day takes on a far sunnier disposition, John Wayne Airport here I come.

Hertz has been abandoned by me for this trip, as they reveal themselves as shameless robber barons in the SoCal market while the merry men at Alamo are only to happy to rob from them and re distribute fine cars to the more parsimonious of us road warriors. The gleaming white beauty that is Ms.Malibu, awaits for me just one floor below, with blindingly chromed wheels and a cloth cool black interior. (more…)

Bombs Away

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Not THE bombs… I refer to the flower form of certain Peonies that we now have up for sale on Flowerbud.com. It is one of those rare years when we have a small portion of a giant crop just making harvest the week of Mother’s Day. It is so rare that one gets to sell product with such little arm twisting that it leaves an indelible impression upon us all. The initial impression is red, and then some ( and with maybe just a little of the green in the making ) as the variety that obliged/and is still obliging us is the awesome Red Charm. Its a show stopper that is going to make your jaw drop and have you uttering all manner of inane sounds… much as if your were cradling a better than average looking newborn. You might also think of expanding you vocabulary of inanities because ‘Red Charm’ will no sooner be ever so softly dropping its billion petals onto your kitchen table ( simply the best place in the house for such beauty ) than ‘Coral Charm’ will be arriving in from the fields, flaunting its blend of salmon and rose colorings, guaranteed is a double take and thence to full on swoon. And so it goes… a harvest season lasting perhaps three weeks and (with luck) a fourth week to finish off sales.

Wave after wave of colors, larger than believable flower forms and all with tantalizing textures. Are you feeling the need, the want, the desire to buy what you remember from Grandma’s garden back in the Mid West?  The flowers depicted on Chinese Porcelain, stitched into an old tapestry, printed on modern textiles as well as painted by masters and starving artist alike? Well then, It really is a case of NOW or next year. Willamette Valley temperatures can change overnight from the mid 40’s to the mid 80’s at this time of year and then the Peony waits for no one. Not for you nor I, prince nor pauper, and never but never for bride or bridezilla.

You should be so lucky as to view these farms… vast acreages of nicely aged, enormously sized Peony “bushes”, rank after rank of stately rows undulating within and over a landscape left by the Willamette river ( that still inundates on rare and expensive occasion  ) A Peony plant left to its own devices throws up multiple stalks, each containing numerous buds. We walk (wade through) those ranks of buds in their multiple millions and remove all but the  terminal one while still tiny. This terminal bud grows fat and plump and and very vigorous as one can imagine… it is now feasting on nutrients once bound for a score of others.

On a good May day, with a sky of Oregon blue and the large puffy white clouds making a back drop to Cottonwoods trees, fluttering freshly minted leaves that stir on the merest hint of breeze… it is as if a million drum sticks held high, slowly take on color as the same breeze sways them rhythmically, hypnotically in near endless rank. A few ooze a sweet stickiness, a siren call to hastening ants, others sprout a solitary bright petal from a still tight green sheath ( as a hatchling bird frees itself from the egg ) and slowly but ever so surely they feel to our enquiring and knowledgeable squeeze, much like marshmallows… like Somoas. You have heard of Somoas, right? Well if the temps keep climbing (especially the night time temps) as they invariably do in May and early June, there are going to be days when we pick a heck of a lot more than just ‘Somoa’ of these Peonies.

SO we shall pick and you shall buy. That’s the deal for the next three weeks and should you plan your wedding or a “must have Peony” party outside of this brief window you can pen all the paean’s you want to the precious Peony and not produce a single, double or even a bomb. A Peony marches very much to the beat of its own drum. Now the Peonies you and I deal with in our transactions at Flowerbud are referred to as herbaceous as they die down to the ground every winter, unlike their tree form brethren and as far as history is concerned they are right in there with the longest used flowers in ornamental culture… some 2500 years and are symbols and emblems in both China and Mongolia. Japanese history notes them as more for medicinal purposes, particularly in the arena of convulsions. Talking of convulsions, I bet the lowly Zinnia had one when the state of Indiana booted it as the state flower in favor of the Peony a little more than fifty years ago. It is deliciously fitting that our fields today are located a short jaunt down a potholed road from Portland as a little research also reveals the Peony to be the common subject of Japanese tattoos and the decrepit masses over the age of thirty may not know (or care) that this pleasant city, once a bastion of forestry, fishing and farming is now the inked flesh capital of the USA. I must say that among the barbed wire bracelets, the Kilroy’s were here, the Maori war paint along with the odd anchor  and M Jagger’s lips, I have yet to see a Peony. I now have an incentive to look harder… and soon, before Gen’s X,Y and Z  fall foul of the sun, gravity and years. A ‘pruning’ process begetting wrinkles enough that their Peony tatts morph from tramp stamps to Rorschach ink blots… or worse.

A planted Peony’s preference is to remain that way and the only way to get premium flowers is from plants established a bare minimum of four years. These rows we wade through rain or shine during harvest season are waist high and better, and on a rainy day in the valley when even Ospreys cling tight to the nest, one slips and slides from cold bath to cold shower, stooping to slip a razor sharp knife low down and through a stem that gets quite woody… as the mud slicks your boots and the water pours down your collar and up your sleeves. We generally liberate a mature plant for 2/3 rds of its stems every year and it can go on like this for years providing the root is happy enough planted shallowly in its mucky soil, doesn’t get over fed, over watered or over seen once flower harvest is complete. Pampering a Peony proves pointless! A mature peony plant that is going to be used for propagation to further the species, enlarge your acreage or be sold into the garden trade can be so tenacious of its location it can take a back hoe to pry it free and then to carve the root mass into plantable pieces containing from three to five “eyes” can take a young man with an axe and loppers to get it down to the pruning shears and knife stage. Its a chore, and goes far in explaining the cost of a peony which at twice the price would still be cheap.

A beautiful gift, a treasure of nature and good husbandry, as a bunch of drumsticks turn into a bowl of beauty. For you for anyone and everyone, delivered almost anywhere in the USA tomorrow for $86 all in. Impossible in China 2500 years ago. Not possible in the USA 25 years ago! Possible today from Flowerbud.com

Bombs Away!

Royal Mail attempts DIY

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Sitting here post Christmas in the Flowerbud offices and licking not a few carrier inflicted wounds, I am mightily cheered (when perhaps I should not be) by news of a pain being felt by the Brits at the hands of none other than their iconic Postman. It seems that when reading the story there is little “royal” about these characters, other than the stink they have created in their lack of industry.

Hot off the Edinburgh Fringe Press is a tale of flower deliveries gone woefully awry, an all too common occurrence. As you well know, Flowerbud contracts with FedEx to carry our cargo in entirety, largely I might add, because the USPS is too busy bemoaning the decline of mail to see much further than the length of their shorts, and that there might just be a whole galaxy of packages to lift and carry from the burgeoning ecommerce businesses currently swelling the coffers of Brown and Purple. All the while the “Brown Shorts” over at UPS seems barely interested in competing against that “Purple Promise” from Memphis from a price point of view and of course the trouble making DHL ( denizens of the German Post Office no less ) have been summarily ejected as a factor from the US and thus can not be the lovely thorn of competitiveness in the side of anyone.

Anyway, back to the Brit Postie, less you think it is only us that has reason to complain. Flower companies that operate substantially like flowerbud.com in the UK have the option of using the Royal Mail to deliver their flowers to a recipient. Well it turns out that nobody consulted the postmen themselves, as apparently they do not like the loading and delivering of parcels. I guess they are taking the “letter carrier” thing to an extreme. As the Edinburgh Fringe Press so succinctly put it ” they cannae be arsed carrying parcels”. So what do they do? Well now, they quickly and sneakily slip a card through your letter box that says you where out  (Oh no you where not!) when they were in! Your recourse?  You can go on down and collect it from the post office. It turns out that one gal got wind of this and chased after the Postie, getting him to “fess up” that he did not even have the parcel in the van as he had chosen to leave it at the depot. In the case I am familiar with the recipient, knowing they were flowers ( as does the post office ) went to the depot only to be told they were not there ( maybe still on the van?) and best to come back tomorrow. Of course the flowers being perishables and Edinburgh being perishingly cold…. a thoughtful gift from nephews had done the expected… perished.

Post script  on 3/11/10

A peely wally  mouthful (some two months in the making) of PC waffle from one whose inaction when speaking of action, speaks volumes to ineptness and an I could care less attitude of one in a safe seat and with no “skin in the game”.

Thank you for contacting Royal Mail.

I’m very sorry to hear of the problem you’ve had regarding the ‘Sorry.you
were out’ card we recently left you.

Of the huge volumes of letters and packets we handle, very few encounter a
problem along their way - but we take every reported failure seriously.

I fully appreciate the inconvenience and delay caused as a result of us
leaving a ‘Sorry.you were out’ card for an item, even though you were at
home.

It’s important that our customers have confidence in us to always deliver
their mail to a secure and high standard, so I apologise again that we have
let you down.

I have passed these details to the manager of your local Delivery Office
who will do all that is required to ensure you receive the quality of
service you should expect in future.

I hope that the action above resolves your enquiry and concludes this
matter: if you need to get back in touch with us, please remember to quote
your unique reference number 1-1348330448.

Once again, please accept my sincere apologies on behalf of Royal Mail for
the problem you’ve had, and our thanks for taking the time to make us aware
of this. Please be assured that we take letting our customers down
seriously and will use this information to make further improvements.

Regards

Anthony Ryles
Customer Service Advisor

The Vase Runner

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Barely off Delta’s Nice/Amsterdam/Portland flight (vacated by Northwest post ticket purchase and now code shared with KLM and Air France… really! ) when handed a ticket to Long Beach, CA along with instructions to disburse among a half dozen farms, a container load of Flowerbud’s acrylic vases that are painfully late in from China. The approach into Long Beach takes us above the billowing smoke from the still rampant blaze that is the Station Fire,  an arson caused conflagration in some foothills east of LA. Of all the LA area airports used by me this past decade, Long Beach has never counted among them, until now. To say the least it is small, quaint almost. Eminently manageable and as far from what one might imagine an airport in Los Angeles to be as possible. No frill, no flash and quite some number of trailers operating as peoples offices. California continues showing us that the 31st state is in a state of penury… the first of many such glimpses I catch through the dried up and weedy landscaping, the endless trash blowing roadside, and for the next 1975 miles, feel… as I bounce through potholes and thump over misaligned bridge expansion joints and collapsed concrete in freeway lanes. (more…)

Keeping the Blue Side Up

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

I took another flight a week or so ago, one of countless thousands, yet in many ways, despite it being far the most expensive it was without doubt the one that was the most gratifying and rewarding and all things being equal, worth the money. There was no upgrade to business class, no glass of wine, eye mask or newspaper. It started and ended in the very same place and flew (relative to others I take) slow and low over some spectacular territory. This was a case of very much seeing the trees in the forest… and the river running through it. (more…)



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