Co-President’s Message – June 2025

        It’s June and 1 week past the deadline for the president’s letter. Why? It’s simple… because my son got married on Sunday. Let’s get to the thank you’s first. Bless Debbie Arnold, our newsletter editor, for her patience. Bless Connie Melvin, our co-president, for telling me this morning to just write about the flowers. 

The flowers… 

The flowers were my first tears of the day. My brain says wedding = flowers so it is no surprise that our flowers came from two local businesses, Artemis Flower Farm (Artemis Flower Farm) and Longmont Florist (www.longmontflorist.com). Hoe and Hope visited Artemis Flower Farm two years ago and you all know the fields of flowers growing under the Colorado sun are irresistible. Did you know they will make you cry too? Helen and Nelson, the owners of Artemis Flower Farm, pour so much love, knowledge, creativity and passion into their work. They were beaming as they brought each bouquet out and helped us load them. I was truly astonished at the beauty they created, and the first tears came. 

Flowers are beautiful but sometimes they have a deeper meaning. The bride and my now daughter-in-law wanted tropical flowers to pay tribute to her father’s Jamaican roots and to honor her late mother who carried tropical flowers at her wedding. This is where Longmont Florist comes in. For me, tropical flowers conjure the deep jewel tones of hibiscus and bougainvillea or the exotic shape of birds-of-paradise. I learned how wrong I was when I met Kristie, a designer at Longmont Florist who loves working with tropical flowers. She listened to the bride and created an all-white bouquet of anthurium, orchids and gardenias surrounded by soft green leaves and airy grasses. The bride looked at me and said, “I want to smell these forever”. More happy tears.

Flowers … they make us happy and make us feel good. We love growing them. Most of us can talk non-stop about them, exclaim over them, and be stopped in our tracks by them. We spread the word when the native wildflowers first appear. We celebrate and share pictures with each other when the first of whatever appears in our gardens. We fill our carts at the local garden center. So next Wednesday when you are thinking you don’t have anything “good enough” to bring to a garden club flower show, go out into your garden and snip one pretty, sweet smelling, memory filled, simple or extraordinary blossom. Put it in your prettiest bud vase or the jelly jar you haven’t thrown out yet and share the power of flowers. 

With gratitude for the beautiful month of June, 

 Mary