“Thank you for calling the flower shop, how can I help you?” I repeat mindlessly while picking up and slamming down the phone in between designing bouquets. My creativity feels muffled while fulfilling the customer orders. I run out of dark blue flowers that an 89-year-old declared “manly” enough to protect the masculinity of her landlord while still thanking him for snow-blowing her lawn. I run out of anything that looks like a peony for the Pinterest aficionados who assume their season spans beyond early spring. I’m left with one remaining order for an arrangement consisting of “something kinda goth and angsty; anything dead or dead-looking.” The corners of my lips curve into a smile.
I grab black magic roses, broken curly willow, schwartzwalder mini callas, and my pièce de résistance- baker fern and a full can of Design Master black spray paint for flowers. I run to the back of the shop, enter the parking lot with greenery in hand, and start my work. I actively avoiding spraying myself, working with the wind to protect my glasses from obtaining spontaneous and permanent transition lenses. But I can’t help but love the smell.
I could practically feel the brain cells sizzling and exploding as I openly inhaled the fumes. However, with vivid memories of the last time I practically fainted between the dumpsters in the alley behind the shop after I didn’t cover my mouth and nose while spraying, and all the times I successfully used this spray as impromptu bug repellent, I slightly adjust my aim. Like literally any laundry detergent that has ever existed, Clorox spray (with bleach), and nail polish remover, I would use a perfume version of the spray we florists use to create the colors that simply do not occur naturally.
My favorite smells used to not envelop anything beyond the simple smells of grass after a fresh cut, cigarette smoke, post-rain scents, gasoline, and dried lavender. Yet, now that I begin to adapt to my role as a modern woman, my nose strictly craves the scents of substances with large red warning labels and the number for poison control next to the brand name. From Pine Sol to flower paint, I’m starting to enjoy any aerosol spray with chemicals that smell like nature, or remove nature’s smells.
I continue spraying the baker fern, pausing after completing a full coat in order to let it dry and allow myself a few sniffs in the interim. I start to experience the same throat-tightening, heartrate-heightening feeling I do when I wash the flower buckets using the lovely “bleach alternative” soap-like substance in a milk gallon container labeled in Mandarin. I walk back inside, look over at the sink with an endless slow drip that is perpetually on fire like the tabernacle candle in Roman Catholic churches, indicating that there is a higher power among us. The corners of my lips are about to curve up into a smile until I see a butterfly, flying confusingly towards the opening of my water bottle.
I sprint over to the bottle just as the butterfly falls inside. One hand grabs the bottle, the other swoops a cannister of Burton & Burton Floral Floralife Leafshine, typically used strictly to spray wasps to death, from underneath my workbench. I start to spray wildly into my water bottle for the next five minutes and then fish out the vermin with a piece of green florist stem wire before sliding it into the garbage can. I sigh, take a swig out of the bottle, and let my gaze float from flower head to flower head, weaving between all the buckets displayed on the shop floor. My head begins to buzz, clearly full of adrenaline, and I feel alive, surrounded by nature’s beauty. I take another deep breath of the baker fern and conclude this is definitely my happy place, before softly fading off to sleep.