When flowers say it all

My mum and Miss Reid knew each other for the best part of 40 years. Knew OF each other but never met and for all I know Miss Reid, as a person, didn't even exist.

But Miss Reid bought my mum enormous joy over the years for which I am very grateful.

Because on the second Sunday of every May every year Miss Reid would save my butt, keep my mother's jaundiced vision of me as a dutiful son intact. And all was good.

Miss Reid was a florist's shop in the Octagon in Dunedin. And I had a standing order with this shop. As I was touting my meagre skills to newspapers, radio stations and TV channels anywhere north of the Kilmog, Miss Reid would simply stump up the day before Mothers' Day with a big bouquet of flowers to a home unit in the Dunedin suburb of St Clair and it would be enough to send an elderly grey-haired lady into paroxysms of delight ….. for days.

It was a standing order, a fallback. Miss Reid would deliver the flowers, a few days later I would get the bill in Christchurch, Wellington or Auckland – wherever I was pulling a wage – then I would bundle off a cheque as you did in those days and my responsibility was discharged, the disappointment of a feisty old lady avoided for another year.

I was hopelessly disorganised about such things. If Miss Reid, bless you whoever you are, didn't tend to Mothers' Day for me, it would never have happened. Mum used to marvel at me never missing Mothers' Day. A loving and attentive son - little did she know. Or perhaps she just chose to think positively as mothers do about sons.

The downside to this deal was the daily telephone conversations the length of the country. The bouquet was dissected, each flower described in minute detail and as the days wore on you'd get the 'Gosh, they're lasting so well.” Then she would start culling the drooping blooms until we got to the inevitable day. 'They were on their last legs lad.” The Mothers' Day bouquet was now $50 plus delivery of compost. They would last weeks, almost to the point you could see the next Mothers' Day round the corner. My Mum knew how to eke the best out of a bouquet of flowers. Then our phone conversations turned back to the weather. The flowers had only been a diversion. Why is everyone in Dunedin pre-occupied with the weather? Why do they all think they are Jim Hickey down there?

We're on a toll call, the meter's ticking over and Mum wants to tell you that Dunedin was only two degrees colder than Auckland today. Or three degrees warmer than Tauranga. It was a daily contest for her. 'Bloody northerners, think they're warmer than us.”

I read somewhere Miss Reid Florist is one of New Zealand's oldest and most respected florists. She delivered for me for years and made my old Mum, and me, very happy on Mothers' Day. What a powerful thing a flower is. What a blessing that woman was.

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