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Designer's visit brings great joy
 Over the Garden Fence
by Mary Lee Minor
for the Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum Lifestyles: Home & Garden Section
As the design crew from the Mid-Ohio Floral Artisan Society and designs from the demonstrations at the Bucyrus Public Library faded from sight, you have to wonder if it was all worth it.
In a return conversation with Mark Massie AIFD, his enthusiasm was still ever-present. The sharing he wanted to have happen with the community had taken place. In fact, he had already moved on to teleconferencing his next big project.
By spring, design classes will be offered. According to Mark, these will unfold as understanding of the art elements - line, form, color, texture, space and shape - blend with appreciation of the nature of the materials being used. As art form, designing combines nature's gifts with human insights and self-expression.
As Mark, Edie, Christine and others arranged in the community room, it was light-hearted play. Often they watched one another to study the ideas taking form.
It is a bit like inventing. You see a new way of employing plant materials and your own mind uses that as a base for your next design.
It reminded me very much of my trips to the Ohio State Fair on the four days where amateur arrangers make entries for that day's flower show. We all hauled our own plant materials into the back room with tables. We commenced to play. What a riot to see what a particular title brought to someone else's head. We shared flowers, too.
That reminds me of what I wanted to share. A week ago, I explained that Mark implied that he would give all the leftover flowers away. Since the Earth, Wind and Flowers Garden Club was meeting in the library the night of cleanup, we were given every encouragement to take flowers home.
Without mentioning names, several of us were tearing into trash bags, finding roses with corsage pins in the center and squealing. The rummaging went into the hall, where roses and carnations were grabbed out of appreciation.
When the adventure moved to the elevator and upstairs, I charged right along. Standing before some monumental designs, those lemony-orange proteas cried "take us home." I did.
In fact, I ended up with a large box of spent roses, fresh carnations and assorted twigs and leaves, some foliage and quite a bit of Oasis. Others held bouquets of mums, lilies, carnations and assorted foliages on the way home.
The protea were plunked into a solution of glycerine which I has used earlier this fall to make my tri-colored beech usable for several years. Yesterday, I noticed that the fluid was gone from the vase. The color remains in these lovely blooms.
It was a night full of joy. The colors may not have expressed Christmas, but the spirit floated through our time together. We appreciate Mark Massie AIFD and his generous enthusiasm is right here in our area for those who signed up over the four-day period.
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