When I was about 2 months old, my parents opened up their own Flower Shop. They had purchased a plot of land with two houses on it, converted one to the flower shop and we lived in the other.

All of my memories growing up revolve around the shop – from just hanging out there, to using the work tables to make school projects, to helping out on holidays and weekends and more.

For our family, Valentine’s Day was a huge undertaking. Definitely not a holiday for us, but instead, several weeks of planning and prepping and hard work.

I remember lots of late nights prepping buckets for flower deliveries, unpacking/displaying stuffed animals, wiring roses, writing cards, making bows – oh the endless bow-making!

Dad would create some nifty holders for the car – for bud vases and arrangements to ride safely during deliveries. We had city maps on the wall and at the ready and would carefully plot each delivery run to ensure everything got where it needed to be.

Family members and friends and boyfriends and eventually husbands would be drafted to help out – answering the never-ending phone calls, taking orders, driving the delivery truck, and running the deliveries to the door.

And at the end of the day we would all collapse, exhausted. With torn-up hands from the water and rose thorns. With the endless sound of phantom phones ringing in our ears. With just enough energy to order a pizza for dinner.

It was always a day where we got to be a part of spreading joy.

I’ll forever be grateful for growing up as part of a family and business that was there for our community. For their beginnings, for their endings, for their joys and for their sorrows.

I will always miss the frantic pace, smell of floral foam, roses and carnations, the cramped hands and tired feet at the end of a productive holiday. But especially the smile when someone would open the door and realize that delivery is for them.

Priceless!

<Support your local family-owned businesses>