20 Dec in the middle

Somewhere between finishing school and travelling overseas, the time had arrived to “find myself” and who i was.

Coming out of an all girls boarding school in the city, i found this a bit of a shock. Not the shock of the real world, because i was already living away from home, but the realization that i didn’t know my own identity. I didn’t know what i really wanted to be and what i wanted to do, so a GAP year to the UK filled this in for the moment. I had the luxury of working in the Lakes District, the most wonderful green part of the world i had ever seen. This part is a long story, which i wont go into, but it did end with me finding the spark that i had inside of me to follow a floral journey.

I worked in a couple of retail flower shops, and absolutely loved the feeling of creating freely. At the time in the UK, it was your standard floristry arrangements, and i never thought about any courses or training, (my gosh my boss at the time must of been very lenient)  but i didn’t do a certificate or anything. I did get sent over from Australia, a floristry course and all its assessments, but studying on paper was not something that interested me. Not when i was able to work every day with flowers in a shop and get hands on experience.  I have to say now i am totally missing out on the wonderful https://tallulahroseflowers.com/.

A flower school quite close to where i lived, and i would of loved to have dived into this course.  There was one thing that i didn’t enjoy, which was when i was critiqued on arrangements. Bouquets i could create well. I loved the textures and colours that i could put together, but when it came to arrangements, i hated them. I think it was the oasis part that right from the word go, i just couldn’t feel confident in the beginning of the structure.  I liked the freedom of creating from my perspective, so i quickly realized that i liked working for myself.

Now, i absolutely love teaching in a workshop environment, the basics about creating an arrangement, but then the most important part: “There is no wrong. your creativity is uniquely yours”.

So in this middle part, i worked out that: Yes, flowers were something that i enjoyed working with, and that this could be something for me to do. but i never thought about running my own business. that comes later.  For the meantime i was super happy to be working in a busy retail florist shop. Valentines and mothers day were a buzz. Working long hours the night before, and the vibe of the shop the day of, was wonderful.  as the time went by though, I did begin to feel like just “the worker” which is what i was, but the creativity and love in the work began to get stale, and the delivering took me out of the shop, which is where i wanted to be. I did have some great staff to look up to, and inspire to be like though.

I did find more than a shop to work in, upon my return home. A husband. A farmer.  Once i moved out to the small town where the farm was, and we had started our family, floristry and creativity had been put to the side. But its funny how it kept creeping back, and there was no better time with young babies, then being outdoors in nature and beginning a garden to keep you sane.

So i had found ‘something’ that i enjoyed, that i felt i had deep within me, but i couldnt go that next step yet. Just to have a fresh vase of flowers at the beginning of the week, cut from my garden, will do.

“everything will work out exactly how it is supposed to, and when it is supposed to. Be patient with yourself and your growth. you will get there one day, so dont forget to enjoy the journey’.

some more on this floral journey another time.

some images by:

Photo by Maria Orlova is licensed under CC0

Photo by John-Mark Smith is licensed under CC0

Photo by Free-Photos is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA