A little while ago, a friend asked me if I could make flowers for his love. I happily obliged, gathering stems from my family garden, imbuing the arrangement with as much love as I knew how. I denied his kind offer for payment, as lately I’ve felt a calling to create (when I can) without financial gain. As a thank you, Tom gifted me with Eckhart Tolle’s, ‘A New Earth’. I’m not sure if he’s read the book himself (Tommy?!), but the first 3 pages were of far greater value to me than the money he could’ve shared. For a long time, I’ve struggled to put into words what flowers mean to me, how they’ve changed my life, and what it feels like to hold them in my hands. Tolle (not surprisingly) has done just that… bare with me, this is long, but so profoundly beautiful. If you’re a florist, I hope this speaks to you as deeply as it does me. “Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: the first flower ever to appear on planet earth opens up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event that heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants, the planet had already been covered in vegetation for millions of years. The first flower probably did not survive for long, and the flowers must have remained rare and isolated phenomena, since conditions were most likely not yet favorable for a widespread flowering to occur. One day however, a critical threshold was reached, and suddenly there would have been an explosion of color and scent all over the planet… much later, those delicate and fragrant beings we call flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness in other species. Humans would be drawn to, and fascinated by them. As the consciousness of humans developed, flowers were likely the first thing they came to value that had no utilitarian purpose for them, that is to say, was not linked in anyway to survival. They provided inspiration to countless artists, poets and mystics… The Buddha is said to have given a silent sermon once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa began to smile. He is said to have been the only…