My brother is in town for his best friend’s funeral. It is such a terrible story. His best friend, Ryan, was out on a boat near Spilsby Island off Port Lincoln with his father, his brother, his nephew, and a friend when a freak wave capsized their boat. Ryan, his father, and their friend all drowned. Ryan’s brother and his 12-year-old son survived by clinging to a reef. It is heartbreaking. Ryan was only 40. He had a wife and two young children, and just like that his life is gone and the lives of his family are changed forever.
Ryan was a beautiful soul. I hadn’t seen much of him over the last twenty years, but when my brother and I were young I knew him well. Later, when I was working on the reception desk of a nursing home, Ryan worked there for a while as a carer. He was such a gentle, thoughtful, and caring person. I still remember at the work Christmas party we drank too much together and he told me I had been like a sister to him. That meant a lot. I didn’t go to the funeral today, but Mum said my brother spoke well.
I don’t like funerals, but something that always makes them gentler is the flowers. I think I have literally wanted to be every profession in the world at some point, but the one I regret not pursuing the most is floristry. I love flowers. I can only name the basics — roses, lilies, tulips, gerberas, chrysanthemums — but I love them all. I love their smell, and I love it when a florist has taken the time to cut the stems and arrange them into something beautiful.
If you think about it, floristry must be an ancient profession. Scientists have found evidence that Neanderthals laid flowers at burial sites for their dead. There must have been someone arranging them, deciding how to place them, even then. Neanderthals first appeared around 400,000 years ago in Europe and western Asia, which suggests that the art of floristry is hundreds of thousands of years old. I haven’t heard of other hominins using flowers in ceremonies, but it seems possible.
I can easily imagine florists in ancient times making arrangements for weddings, or flowers being used in rituals of love. I want to know did men give flowers to their girlfriends and wives in ancient times? I feel like it’s a universal, timeless act — and I think there’s a real chance it happened.
Back when I was about 18, I seriously considered studying floristry. I used to go into my mother’s office in town and chat with her receptionist about it. She was about my age and also had an interest in floristry as a side hustle, but unlike me she was actually doing something about it. Incidentally, I only recently discovered she now has a top job as an executive assistant to a minister.
At the time, I had all sorts of grand ideas. I wanted to open my own florist shop called Strike A Posey. I imagined a fleet of vintage VW Beetles painted as ladybirds for flower deliveries. Inside the shop there would be a “bed of roses” and a section where customers could “tiptoe through the tulips.” Daisy chains would hang from the ceiling, and big screen TVs would play Little Shop of Horrors on repeat — because, that movie is set in a florist. I even envisioned marine fish tanks filled with exotic fish, inspired by the aquarium scene in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet.
Out the front, I pictured people dressed as bees and butterflies handing out flowers to passers-by. I can laugh now and admit the business probably wouldn’t have made much money, but at the time I dreamt about it. I told so many people around town about Strike A Posey. Mum never liked the name — she thought the word “strike” made it sound like domestic violence — but I loved it.
The floristry course in Adelaide is the Certificate III in Floristry at TAFE SA. It runs part-time over a year, and I never ended up doing it. In all these years of jumping from one thing to another, I never sat down to commit to floristry. One day I’d still like to — not to work as a florist, but simply to learn how to arrange flowers properly, and to be able to go to the flower markets and buy fresh blooms every week.
Every now and then, I would slip back into my Strike A Posey mindset, until one day I googled the name and discovered there actually was a florist called Strike A Posey — in Adelaide, of all places. I couldn’t believe it. Adelaide is small, so I couldn’t help but wonder if the owner might have heard the name through me, third-hand. I can’t be sure, but either way I say good luck to her. It’s a great name, and an even greater profession.
