If you live in any of the states north of the Mason Dixon Line you'll find it amusing that North Carolina got a dose of between 4 and 10 inches of snow and a little sleet this weekend.  In Minneapolis or Buffalo that's spring weather.  In North Carolina it prompted Governor Perdue to declare a State of Emergency.  I'm not kidding!  All events were cancelled; churches closed; schools shut down well into next week; a policeman came by our florist on Friday warning us to close early ahead of the coming catastrophe.  I'm not making this up.  All the news channels were full of reporters standing by a stranded car somewhere warning viewers of the certain death which would come to anyone who dared venture out of their driveway.  I took a chance, broke the rules and drove to work on Saturday morning to survey the carnage.  The roads were almost empty except for a tractor pulling some guy on a snow board.  Defying all the odds, my Ford Focus managed just fine, by just driving slowly and braking carefully - skills that are lacking among a surprising percentage of drivers in NC as there were, in fact quite a few cars parked at crazy angles in ditches.  I put on the "Open" sign in the shop and turned it off 4 hours later with zero customers and one phone call wanting to send flowers to someone in the coffee shop next door which was, of course, closed.  Not sure when the "Emergency" will end.  They say here that the local method of dealing with snow on the roads is to wait for it to melt.

Valentine’s Day is a love/hate event for florists. It is the biggest day of the florist’s year and vital for our financial survival. (Love it!) It means  hundreds of people who all need their order delivered on the same day and, given the significance of the occasion, catastrophic consequences if a mistake is made. (Hate it!)The normally sleepy, laid back pace here turns into something like the pit of a mercantile exchange on black Friday, with everybody rushing around shouting with a phone in one hand, orders clutched in the other and roses protruding from everywhere.

Our staff has to expand dramatically as does the length of hours spent at work. Fortunately, we have some fabulous backup designers who have normal careers and take the day off to add some chaos to their lives for a day. I don’t know why they do it, but I’m so grateful to them, (Michelle, Lauren, Emily, Jene, you’re crazy but thank you!) Maybe it’s the joy of saving some poor sap who forgot his wife/girlfriend wanted roses and phones us at 5pm on Valentine’s Day praying for rescue. (We get a one or two every year). Maybe it’s the romantics who do things like order a vase of roses with the middle one of a different color to draw attention to it and then hides an engagement ring inside. (Yes, he really did it!). Maybe it’s the perverse joy of living through a hurricane, or that feeling we all get when we finally close the doors and collapse in our chairs and open a bottle of wine and share the common euphoria of coming through alive.

Like it or not, V-Day is coming. It is relentless, merciless and unforgiving. We bow to its mighty power and pray for the strength to rise to its challenge. So this year, spare a thought for your poor florist who is digging deep into her soul to summon up the stamina to design that next gorgeous vase of flowers, take pity, and order your Valentine’s flowers early!

Our New Front Counter!

For those of you who visited our old shop, you will have to agree we've tidied things up a bit.  Here's a photo of Margaret at her new work space.  I never thought the colors would work but they did and we have a lot more light and space than our old location.  To be honest, its not this tidy any more.  Floristry is a messy business and Margaret works best amidst chaos, but at the end of the day we clean it all up and get ready to make another mess tomorrow.

We've got over the move, the grand opening and now are in the throes of the Christmas season.  Everyone by now is thoroughly sick of pine and shiny baubles.  Only four more days to go and we'll have our first full day off since we started the move on 1 November.  Hooray! and a Happy Christmas to you all. 

Apologies for the protracted gap in time between my last blog and this one.  During this period we have not been idle.

From 1 November, its been all go, go, go with what has turned out to be a marathon move to our new shop location at the other end of Timberlyne Shopping Center.  The coolers alone took four days to break down, move and re-connect.  The painting and design of the new space took the rest of the month and we have to give a big shout out to two extremely talented, hard-working and visionary designers, Betsy James and Ingrid Speakman.  These amazing women are a team of professional interior designers who have made a vast difference in the look of Victoria Park Florist.  If you want advice from the best, give them a call on (919) 260-1650.

All the sanding, scraping and painting has left no time for blogging, but that's all done now and we'll try to make new postings in a more timely fashion.

WATCH OUT! There are hijackers at work in the floral industry.  They are internet companies who are ripping off consumers by posing as local florists. These pirate order gatherers  spend millions to grab prominent positions for their web advertising and lure people surfing for a good florist. Once they get the orders, they forward the order to a genuine florist in the location of the recipient to be filled and delivered. The ripoff occurs when the order gatherer pockets a hefty  "service charge" plus a big chunk of the value of the order and then hands over as little as half of the money to the florist to go into the flowers. The customer gets fleeced and the genuine florist gets the blame for a smaller than expected arrangement. Most quality florists don't accept orders from these order gatherers but the pirates have learned to go underground and create a host of fake florist names to operate under, tricking the filling florist into accepting the orders.  For more information on these crooks as well as tips on how to avoid them, see www.floristdetective.com

In  May, WRAL TV of Raleigh did an expose on this problem and it featured Victoria Park Florist as well as Ming Garden florist, so if you want to see a bit of Margaret and Dave and our shop, click on the picture link next to this and click to watch the video at the WRAL website once you get there.  Get informed, stay vigilant and don't fall prey to these pirates of the internet waves.

Yesterday, Margaret was startled to see what looked to be her mother walking in through the door of the florist.  The surprise factor was that Margaret's mother died back in 2001 of a stroke brought on by the 9/11 tragedy.  (Our daughter was in New York City at the time and "Ganny" thought her grandchild was in the World Trade Center when it collapsed).  This customer was a generation younger, but of uncanny likeness.  Entirely taken by the lady Margaret engaged her in conversation and learned that she was an artist who enjoyed painting cats.  Well, Margaret is very fond of cats and we have housed (you never "own" a cat) as many as seven at a time.   The lady also expressed an interest in reincarnation which was all the more remarkable given the nature of her resemblance. 
Margaret was now thoroughly intrigued and hooked into a lengthy discourse. 
Among the other details that emerged was that the lady's favorite cat  had recently died - an eccentric black cat who was entirely self possessed, calm of nature and very sure of himself.  Far from hating or fearing dogs, he used to play and sleep with them.  A friend phoned her a few weeks later to say she had come upon a kitten and asked if she might like a new little friend to help fill the gap left behind.  Our artist customer said she knew right away this was her beloved cat come back to her and shocked her friend by telling her she knew it was black, and it turned she was right.  The little kitten had appeared in the strangest way, having been washed out of a drainpipe by the recent rains, tumbling out right at the friend's feet - a gift from heaven. 

As if to further confirm the new kitten's origins, it has taken to all the habits of its predecessor including the places it likes to sit or pee, and fell right into friendship with the dogs like it had known them for years.

Our lease expires on 30 November and we have been working since May on where we want to spend the next 5 years or more.  Its a huge task negotiating a commercial lease as it involves, over time, a fortune in rent and small monthly differences add up to big piles of cash, either to be saved or handed across.

After serious consideration of 6 different locations, including the one we are already in, we've decided to move, but not very far afield.  Our new home is technically called "Suite AG" but it's easier to call it "The shop right at the other end of Timberlyne beyond Cup A Joe and Oscars".  Sprint were in there when they first came into Timberlyne but nobody's been there for a while.  It's a bit out of the way for some retailer's taste but it's just perfect for us!  We're very happy being at the quiet end of Timberlyne (especially after the deluge of disco music from the new Taekwando circus that moved in next to us a couple of months ago).  We'll also be more visible to the clients of Oscar's, Cup A Joe and the Chelsea and hope to reach a lot of new people who don't know about us.  We're banking that all our present friends will manage to find us at the new place and that we'll pick up some new friends over there too. 


Tiles have been laid, walls knocked out and painting commences this week.  We will shift operations when the technicians move our coolers, and not sure when but probably by the end of next week.  If you drive by the Timberlyne area you'll know when we move by the flurry of signs with arrows on them.  (That's if you can find the signs among the blizzard of campaign signs.)  Stay tuned for news of the big trek across the parking lot, and if you're handy with a paint brush, and otherwise bored, put on some old clothes and come grab a brush!

The "We" of this blog are Margaret and David Pender.  "We" found one another because David's parents took him to Africa when they decided to become missionaries in 1972 and he landed up as a very disgruntled 16 year old who would rather be enjoying the fruits of the student revolution just getting under way in the USA and instead found himself in a backwater village called Fort Victoria in Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) with his hair cut short and wearing a school uniform complete with a tie, short pants and knee socks.   However, his misery turned to joy when he met Margaret at Fort Victoria High School and she completely changed his perspective on the situation at hand. 

Margaret grew up on a farm outside of town and, to attend school, used to ride in and out with the daily milk truck.  Besides the dairy, they also grew commercial flowers on the farm, and Margaret's mother and grandmother were expert floral designers and taught little Margaret all the tricks of the trade.  The farm was called "Victoria Park" after the park across the road from the house where Margaret's grandfather was born in London.  Now you know how the florist got it's name.  You will also know why there is a teapot in amongst all the flowers in the photo of Margaret on this page.  Her early life was all tea and flowers and she still loves them both.   After living for over 30 years in Margaret's world, they have decided to move to David's and so here we are in the beautiful, friendly and progressive town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

You're going to find out that the happenings at a florist can be surprisingly interesting.  It certainly keeps us wondering what's coming next!  The fact is that people often come to a florist when there is a crisis in their lives.  Common reasons to send flowers are to mark the occasion of an illness, a new baby, a marriage, a death or when there is a new romance or some problems with an existing one.  Where else you find a convergence of all these high emotions?  I wouldn't be surprised to find that when we move to our new premises (upcoming report) we will leave behind a Poltergeist to haunt whoever moves in next. 

Over the five years we've run Victoria Park Florist, we have had a lot of drama, laughs, fury and angst of all kinds.  We've also seen humanity at its best and worst.  We're starting this blog to share some of those stories with you.  We thought of getting a camera and starting a reality show, but it's not THAT interesting.  Still, the highlights do make for interesting stories and we hope to keep your attention with some of them.