This week has been dominated by the collection and despatch of surplus flowers from last weekend’s Easter/Ramadan and Passover celebrations. Monday, Wednesday and Friday’s trips to Brent Cross yielded 7 shopping trolleys worth each time, the car was barely big enough, and on some days I had to make 2 trips to collect it. We had a wedding to make the flowers for on Wednesday but nothing beyond that. My usual activity with Age UK was on holiday for the week, my weekly Jewish Care class was suspended because of an outbreak of Covid and my other usual avenues to donate flowers to were all closed. This week’s surplus was monumental and even the Manager of one of the M&S branches I ran into said it was a disaster. After some ringing around, head scratching and panicking I donated 2 crates filled with bunches of tulips to Noah’s Ark Children’s hospice in High Barnet, Five Oaks residential home in Cockfosters and the customers of Theo’s Cafe. The altars in New Barnet’s churches this weekend are definitely fuller and The Flower Bank’s customer’s bunches of flowers were all just that bit bigger this week! Yesterday was St George’s Day and an Italian customer came to collect 2 single red roses for his Spanish wife and daughter. It’s certainly the custom in Barcelona for the male partner to give a red rose to their beloved and for the beloved in exchange to give a book. He didn’t know it’s origin or what St George’s association was with Spain but I’d love to know. For the past 3 weeks I’ve been plagued by social media issues and consequently I’ve lost my Instagram page with 1.7k followers. I’ve had to start again and if you’d like to follow me on Instagram my page is @the_flowerybank.
Have a great week. Ursula