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Maybe someone needs some ugly flowers

Fri, 08/05/2016 - 6:25 pm

On my recent trip to my brother’s home in Colorado, I volunteered to help with making decorations for my sister’s daughter’s wedding, which is coming up in a few weeks in Lubbock. I love doing this crafty stuff, especially with my brother’s wife who has every crafting tool known to mankind.

There’s never a delay in making something because we have to run to the store. We had everything … except gray roses. My brother and sister-in-law had made several trips to various Hobby Lobby stores in and around Colorado Springs. They had gone to every craft store in the county. They had checked Dollar General, Tuesday Morning, and the Goodwill Store. They had bought an assortment of near-gray flowers, but were unsatisfied with the resemblance to the one gray rose my sister had sent. 

It was a beautiful gray rose. The petals perfectly matched the little bud at the side. Even the stem was gray and some of the leaves matched exactly. So, being the good-looking member of the family, I felt it was my responsibility to find the gray flowers. If not roses, then hydrangea, or maybe a gray mum. Surely they’d overlooked the prize.

So, on a lovely July morning, she and I made the rounds again. We walked up and down the aisles of flowers testing the blooms against our one gray Texas rose. There were blue hydrangeas, and pale purple lilies. There were dirty white daisies and brown mums. They were all grayish, but nothing so outstanding as the “sample” my sister had sent. 

My sister had also sent pictures of burlap flowers which she was planning to add to the mix, thus creating the shabby-chic theme. The “shabby” burlap flowers were darling, and although we found some at Hobby Lobby, we were pretty sure we could make the burlap blossoms cheaply. We bought one rose as a pattern and took it apart. 

The burlap we purchased did not adapt to the hot glue gun the way the original had. When I finished the first one, it appeared to have been suffering from some dread disease. The burlap raveled out, the glue clumped and the petals refused to curl. Eventually, we decided on a water-lily effect and put some crystals in the middle of each flower. If the lights were low, we’d be fine. 

We found some silver paint in the craft closet and decided to paint the hydrangeas so as to make them appear grayish. It didn’t work very well. It seemed the drought had been bad in hydrangea land and the petals stuck together.

About that time, my brother came in from the garage. He was carrying a drill. Instead of a drill bit, he’d inserted a paper towel and suggested using that to paint the flowers quickly. Although I feared he’d spatter silver paint all over the kitchen, he kept the drill on slow and quickly spattered silver paint all over the purple hydrangea. We sent pictures of the adventure back to my sister in Texas.

My sister called a few minutes later. “Why are y’all painting flowers? I’ve got all the flowers we need. I just sent that rose to show you what we’d done. We bought white roses and spray painted them last week. All we need are the burlap runners for the tables.”

Two days, a tank of gas, and enough burlap fluff to set off every asthmatic in the neighborhood; and we had accomplished nothing. My sister told us to bring the flowers … they’d find a place for them. Oh, well, we had a good time.