Beautiful Beautiful Blossoms

I have a bunch of family in Boston, which I'm so lucky to have. I love to visit my sister Jan and her husband Tom too. They have a lovely store in Newton Highlands called BLOSSOMS right off the Green Line T, where they sell silk flower arrangements and other beautiful things. Yesterday, I got a chance to have lunch over there -- they had just gotten a big shipment of silk flowers in big cardboard boxes, almost as large as coffins. Jan and I worked out back opening boxes and talking in the hot Mediterraen sun as we opened box after box of the most gorgeous burnt orange day lilies, red brick orchids, yellow morning glories, removed their wrappings, got them ready to be used this fall. She found a big black lacquer metal pail to put these bushels of lush flowers in, a riot of blossoms waiting for their day to star in a new flower arrangement.

Inside, Tom manned the store, working on outgoing orders, arranging autumnal centerpieces with russet fruits, shades of fall flowers, great splashes of color and texture. They work in a place of such staggering beauty -- I envy them. Of course they see it so differently -- for them it's a lot of sheer hard work and not all that special. Amazing how we see our lives so differently up close.

The shop is long and railroad car-shaped. Both of them are so creative and they have made a beautiful ecstatic cave of sensualness in that small space, which changes season by season before the new season breaks. Yesterday on a blisteringly humid hot August afternoon, I opened the lovely glass door, already overwhelmed by the autumnal window display and entered an air-conditioned heaven of October plants and flowers. They've got tall silk green trees, willows and ivy, shoots of bamboo. They have flower pots of pink and red poppies -- the pots bricky -- the flowers flirty and scarlet. They've got new ceramic vases of cardomon, cinnamon and persimmon, good enough to eat, with one or two or three simple stalks of fresia or an orchid dipping its hooded head in a lady-like manner in palest beige. They have bowls of autumnal fruits -- they look so real -- yellow gourds and brown pears and tan plums and purple berries -- all fake but simple and life-like. They have a flat golden japanese plate of bright tangerine-colored mandarin oranges.

Doctors should prescribe quarterly visits to their shop -- it's such a restorative treat. And they don't even SEE it. They see all the work of it -- yes, yes, I know, it only makes sense. But it's a heaven on earth. to me We talked about our work. We talked about how few people I know have such beauty in their lives on a daily basis. We talked about the offices my brother-in-law has as corporate clients and the arrangements he delivers to companies around town. Often his flowers are the only beauty in the place and thank goodness someone thought to bring those arrangements into their place of work.

We talked about beauty. I thought about my mother who loved to garden. My sister has created a place my mother would adore. I walked around the shop as they helped customers. All the flowers of my mother's garden are there in full bloom, never to pass away, as she has now. My mother's pale lilacs, her washed denim-colored hydrangeas, her funny pink peonies which I loved to fiddle with when I was about five. The peonies had a sticky covering to their buds which ants loved to eat, so they were always crawling with ants. I would flick the ants off of the big round buds for my mom -- not that she asked, but it just seemed helpful. The bell on the door rings like sleighbells as a customer leaves, breaking my peony revery. It's time for me to leave too -- never easy to do. Two hugs, a few more laughs about this and that, a promise to return soon with my son who loves the place and I'm back out on a hot, humid summer street.