That Moment When You Find Hundreds of Dollars Worth of Flowers in the Trash

That Moment When You Find Hundreds of Dollars Worth of Flowers in the Trash

• Monday, March 07, 2016

It was a Friday night. The air felt cold on my skin, so I wore my grandmother's black cardigan with red embroidered flowers. I went to the store to buy myself some veggie chips. You know, for rowdy night home alone. I ended up picking up some coffee frozen yogurt & asparagus too. It's a strange combination, but the asparagus was on sale. I drove home & found a parking space a 1,000,000 miles away from the apartment.

I locked my car & heard the reassuring chirp chirp of the lock. As I'm walking with my reusable bags, keys, & phone in hand, I pass by the dumpster. I see something leaning against the trashcan. I get closer & turn on the light on my iPhone. It's a large flower arrangement. "Are they fake?" I wonder. I put down my bags & gently rub one of the petals with my thumb & forefinger. "They're real." 

I take a better look with my lit iPhone. It's an enormous heart-shaped arrangement with real red roses & baby's breath (gypsophila). I squeal. I try to pick it up but it's too heavy to carry with my bags in hand. I literally run, or perhaps it was a sprint, to the apartment to drop off my groceries. I open the door & dump the bags on the floor. I promptly run back outside. I use my iPhone light again to look at the arrangement. One rose fell sadly on the ground.

I huff & I puff & I squat to lift the large bouquet. I bring it inside & gawk at the massive amount of roses in front of me. I count at least 100 of them. The roses are inserted into a green foam core with a cardboard basket to hold it all together. I couldn't believe someone would throw it out. It wasn't until I shared it on various social media channels that people started commenting things like "Maybe he cheated & didn't get his forgiveness." 

That genuinely never crossed my mind. I thought it was because the arrangement was damaged. The pointed end of the heart was missing a flower or two. Fast forward to the next day, Saturday. My boyfriend went to run some errands & he calls me. 

"There's another flower arrangement on the dumpster. If you want to go check it out," he tells me.

"What? Really? I'll go right now." We hang up. I put on my sandals & trek outside. I spot the flower arrangement he spoke of. It's radiant, outstanding, utterly gorgeous. I pick it up & take it with me inside. I'm standing there looking back & forth at the heart-shaped mass of roses & the lovely & large flower arrangement I just scooped up. Wow!

At the end of the day I'll never know the reason why they were thrown out. Were they from a memorial service? Perhaps the flowers were the victim of someone asking for forgiveness & someone not accepting it. Maybe there was a very floral open house. But I can't spend my life questioning the motives of someone who tosses out hundreds of dollars worth of flowers.

This world is full of unanswered questions. We may struggle for all of our lives to figure out the answers, but sometimes you just have to enjoy the ride. In the end, I went out to get some veggie chips, so I could watch The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants alone on a Friday night & ended up with a stunning arrangement of 100 remarkable red roses subsequently followed by another large bouquet on Saturday.

It's times like these that you can never schedule or foresee. It's times like these that give you a story to last a lifetime & leave you feeling a joy that you didn't know you were missing. I don't know what happened to make someone throw these flowers out, but it made me happy.

This is a true story!

What would you do if you found hundreds of dollars worth of flowers in the trash? Which of these arrangements is your favorite? :]

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