Happy Valentine’s Day

February 14th, 2014

I am sending this blog to all who visit my site.  It is such a joy to share my passions for the beauty of nature and the beauty of people’s creativity. This is my valentine to everyone who visits and looks at the posts. I am putting this post online on the morning of Valentine’s Day California time, so it may not arrive in email boxes until the day after, but in any case the feelings are the same.

I am also sharing some of my adventure yesterday, the day before valentine’s day. I got to visit the San Francisco wholesale flower mart.  My son went with me said he had never seen so many flowers all together at once.  I hadn’t either.  It was quite a treat.

I was specifically looking for flower sellers who sell “Slow Flowers”.  These are flowers that are locally grown either organically or sustainably (more info about this at end of post).

I found a company that specializes in exactly that.  Farmgirl Flowers was the busiest and most lively place at the flower mart.

I got permission to take photos from the very busy manager who had a smile and was sweetly organizing the chaos.

These women weren’t the only workers.  There were more in the aisles arranging flowers.

Some of Farmgirl Flower bouquets ready to go to market.

There were other flower sellers who sold locally grown, CA grown that is.  Of course that is from the tip of  the southern border  to northern  border of the state.  There are a lot of different climates to grown flowers in the golden state.  But nontheless, they are helping bring awareness to people about where the flowers we buy are from and how they are grown.

All these beauties are blooming somewhere on the west coast.  I can’t wait for spring in the Midwest.

Slow Flowers is a movement that is part of Slow Food, whose purpose is to bring local and sustainable plants to our lives, whether food or flowers.  I wrote an article about Slow Flowers for the March issue of The Healthy Planet. It will be available March 1.  I will share it in a blog soon.  Also there is a panel discussion and presentation at the Missouri Botanical Garden on March 1st about the local St. Louis area Slow Flower growers and florists who bring flowers to us in a much saner and more beautiful way that shipping flowers from far away that may be grown in not so healthy ways.  Find out more and register for the Slow Flower presentation here.