Week 6

Entrepreneurial Journal – Week 6

In addition to my regular weekly work this week, I was asked to provide flowers for a gentleman’s 70^th birthday party, thrown by his wife and children.  This was not a complicated job, as it was only 8 centerpieces and they were quite straightforward.  I needed to order a special variety of peony in a burgundy color to offset blue hydrangea.  It needed to look masculine, yet not patriotic.  The difficult thing was that these darn peonies didn’t want to open, no matter what I tried.  It is really hard when you custom order unusual things, as when they get to you, you have no control as to how open or predictable they are.  I spent more than a few hours babying these peonies by stripping the leaves, placing them in warm water and changing the water and conditioner hourly, placing them in a semi-sunny window, I did everything I knew to do, even prying the petals open.  When it was time to arrange, I had barely enough peonies to make it look decent.  When working for a country club, I have noticed there are two different types of people.  There are those who know how much flowers cost, they love flowers and are willing to pay for them, then there are those who don’t want to pay for anything, but want you to give them the sun, moon and stars.  This is where being a florist can be a little tricky.  I wasted a tremendous amount of time getting something to open for a budget that was tight.  You do what you have to do, but it isn’t efficient.  There really isn’t anything I can do about those instances, it’s just part of working with a natural product.  Next time, when working with something unknown or unusual, I will work to get it in a week earlier so that it will have plenty of time to open under refrigerated conditions.