You'll need our She's a Keeper issue to enter our special "Lifetime Bouquet" Contest. On page 109, you'll see photos of 8 beautiful flower bouquets. Your challenge is to guess which of these bouquets are real and which are "lifetime bouquets."
What’s a lifetime bouquet? Having been a flower farmer for more than 20 years (at this point, I grow close to 6,000 iris, hundreds of peonies, daffodils, poppies, and dozens of different annuals every year), I’ve come around to valuing faux flowers—not the tacky kind from our mothers’ generation, but the newly perfected handcrafted petals that can brighten your home or office without the annual tilling of soil, the shipping, and in most cases these days, the agricultural chemicals. Once you’ve read Amy Stewart’s book, Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers, you’ll understand why I’ve become an advocate of faux flowers. Unless your flowers are organically grown, their impact on the environment and the workers who handle them is enormous. For a source of fresh organic flowers, go to www.californiaorganicflowers.com (and they have the cutest photo of the farmgirls who grow and harvest their flowers!).
To enter our contest, examine the photos on page 109 and send me your best guess as to which bouquets are real and which are "lifetime bouquets." Simply send an e-mail to flowercontest@maryjanesfarm.org with your decisions. We'll draw one winning entry from among the entries with the correct answers. The grand-prize winner will receive their very own lifetime "farm-fresh" bouquet, "hand-picked" and arranged by me! Deadline for entries is August 1, 2008.
