Flower Fairytale is the name of my shop. I’ve been told it is a number of things, from cheesy to romantic. I feel it is a fitting, fine name for a flower shop that concentrates on growing as much of their products as possible. Customers are able to browse around and see how the flowers look from each stage of growth if they stop by the greenhouse, the largest part of the shop. It also ensures that the flowers they have are freshly picked and still very lively. I’m lucky to have inherited such a beautiful shop from my parents.
My parents loved flowers. The only thing they loved more then flowers was our family. I was the only child, but I never felt lonely. My parents taught me to love the plants in our greenhouse as I would love brothers and sisters. I spent most of my childhood working here, watering, pruning, fertilizing, and caring for these beautiful plants. I wanted to spend my entire life here, with my family. My parents were worried that I’d never leave and find a life of my own after I turned eighteen and expressed no interest in college or even guys. My mother was worried that they had inserted too much of a love of plant life that I would never love a person. My father tried to ease her fears, saying I might just be a late bloomer.
I am twenty five now, and I still haven’t left the flower shop. Five years ago, around late fall, my parents were killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. No one from that accident survived. I would lock myself in my room for days, just crying. With the store closed for so long, we had lost most of our old customers. I have the feeling that some of them came just as much to see my parents as to see the flowers. Even when they were in their late fifties, their love was still as fresh as the first day it blossomed. Their charm filled the room as did the perfume of hundreds of flowers.
I was snapped out of my depression one day when I came down from my room to look at the greenhouse. I felt guilty over how shabby looking it had become and how my parents must be pained to see what they loved so dearly to be neglected so completely. I started to work at repairing the damage that had taken place from my neglect and finally, five months after the accident, I was able to open the shop up once more. Barely any customers came back.
Five years later we have a tiny customer base at last. It is merely a fraction of what we had during my parents’ peek years, but it is enough to keep the shop out of the red. I was starting to consider contacting some of the upscale restaurants in town and asking if they wanted to do a long term business contract of fresh flowers daily for their evening meals. It was something my parents were strongly against doing, even though the restaurants would offer them high sums. They felt strongly that it should be a person picking the flowers for another person, not just some mass sale. I agreed with the idea, but I had wanted to have a bit more of a safety net for the shop in case I got injured or ill. These past few years had been rather lucky with health, but I wasn’t willing to take any chances.
It was late afternoon, heading towards early evening, when he came in. I was in a simple brown dress with a crisp white apron on, watering the plants while trying to figure out if I would be able to produce enough flowers for restaurant demands. He seemed to be roughly around my age, looking a bit guilty like he had forgotten some important date with his sweetheart. We get enough of those types around this shop. They’d always come in with a guilty or annoyed look, take a quick glance around, than just order a dozen roses mindlessly. I was waiting for the expected order when I was surprised by something different.
He was browsing the shop, looking around at all of the different flowers. He stopped before the small selection we had of snowdrops before he asked me, in a surprisingly gentle and timid voice, what the name of the flowers were. I pointed to the sign next to him as I told him they were called snowdrops. He looked at the sign with surprise and his body language changed. This man seemed to wear his emotions on his sleeve, as anyone walking in would have been easily able to tell he was embarrassed. He babbled on how he must have been blind to not see the very obvious sign. Out of no where, I commented that I was thinking of changing the name of the shop to ‘Snowdrop’.
We were both surprised by my outburst. When he asked why, I couldn’t say anything at first. Turning my gaze from his face back to the flowers, I explained the meaning of the snowdrop. Hope in darkness. He seemed a bit troubled by my answer, asking if the shop was facing hard times. Embarrassed with how sober the mood had become, I turned back with a cheerful smile and tried to brush it off with the explanation that I was just rather fond of snowdrops because they are one of the earliest blooming flowers. It was easy to see I was grasping at straws here, but instead of pressing, he took the hint and switched the subjects.
He wasn’t aware that other flowers had meanings too. He, like many folks, grew up only knowing the meaning of the red rose. Growing up with flowers my entire life, I had a bit more knowledge of the different meanings of each flower, but not all of them. I was aware nearly every flower had a meaning, a message. Some times, as especially with the rose, even the change in the color of the flower changes the message. He nodded seriously with my explanations. It was strange to see someone pay attention to me while I rambled on about flowers. I stopped shortly after I explained the high peek of the flower language knowledge during the Victorian age and asked him if there was something he wanted to buy.
He was startled at first, then commented that he guessed he would just buy a single long stemmed red rose. He explained that he wanted to tell a girl something, but he wasn’t sure how much about the flower language she knew. That and he certainly didn’t know much himself! I nodded in understanding and clipped him a rose, wrapped it in the plastic, then gave it to him. He paid for the flower then thanked me on his way out. The first stars were already making an appearance in the sky by this time. Apparently I had talked about flowers for longer then I thought!
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