May Sarton would turn in her grave

[malafrena]

My family got me a lovely bunch of flowers for Mother's Day. We have a local floral shop, and we've gotten to know the people who work there. So spouse got to hear the story about how flowers are done these days. With the Teleflora system, you can order flowers online. Once that's done, local flower shops scramble to do their best to match the arrangement exactly -- because if they vary too much, customers will be upset.

Personally, I'd rather go back to the old-fashioned way of having florists make their own arrangements (which they did do with mine). But poet May Sarton, who tended her own very large flower gardens, didn't like that newfangled approach. In her journal The House By the Sea, she writes:

I enjoyed the gardens and the delightful women who created them, but my hackles rise always at the attitudes of garden club members. I fear I am unregenerate, or simply old-fashioned, for I do not really like "arrangements" where too often a kind of ingenuity (using strange leaves or lettuce or a cabbage to be "interesting") replaces the simple joys of just plain old-fashioned bunches of flowers, which is what I love.

I'm guessing that she wouldn't shop for flowers online.

On the other hand, I bet she would have gotten a kick out of the daughter we saw who rode up to the flower shop in an electric scooter. That's one lucky mom, there!