During the past summer I bought a small bunch of what I call mini sunflowers to replace a tiny display of sweet peas that I picked once a week in the patio. When the sweet peas died my desk seemed empty, and the sunflowers seemed just the ticket. They lacked the delightful scent, but they were bright and seemed rather dramatic to me. I replaced them twice before they stopped selling them.

A week went by with absolutely nothing. Finally, I asked the florist at the grocery store for help. She was watering things where I have coffee. She gave me a list of flowers to consider, and later that day I came back to buy some. But only one of the flowers she suggested was in stock, and it wasn’t flowering. I ended up with a bunch of buds threatening to bloom. They were called Alstroemeria, or sometimes Lily of the Incas, which I had never heard of.

I bought a tall vase, because they had very long stems, and stripped the leaves off the lower portion of the stems. I also added a packet of some sort of vitamin to the water. It was glued to the wrapper. And in two days the first bud bloomed.

Then the next.

And then thirty of forty more while I slept.

I had a profusion of delicately ornate flowers on my desk in gorgeous white with colorful stripes that changed my entire life. I absolutely loved them. Then, about three weeks later, a petal dropped on my desk, and a few more on the floor, and when I tried to move the vase it seemed like hundreds of petals dropped everywhere. They left a trail from my desk to the trash bag in the kitchen. And once again, my desk was empty.

I replaced the original white Alstroemeria with two more bunches of white, and then lavender, which is pictured here. I went back to white, which was cheerful and seemed to spread happiness and, at the time, was all they had. Flower delivery days are Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I bought the last bunch of white on Wednesday, thinking myself quite fortunate. And as I type this my eye wanders to yellow with red stripes and a hint of green. Alstroemeria purchased last week. It was, again, all they had, but they filled the room with a kind of happiness I never expected. Even the UPS man, looking past me as I signed, said, "Oh, yellow flowers…"

I’ve told this story to the florist every two or three weeks since the first bunch of mini sunflowers, and she now waves at me as I shop. I smile and wave back. As I said in an earlier post, I’ve known lots of crazy people, but I have never met an unhappy florist.