‘With Love, Vancouver.’

Linda let me know that Battle Ground, Washington was selling their old Grand Floral Parade chassis, so I bought it. Thank you Linda Glover. I was overdue for a floral challenge where thousands of perishable flowers could melt in summer heat only to destroy me and my effort to represent the City of Vancouver’s tight-knit community. ‘Doing it,’ I thought. I’d recently lost my beautiful mom to decades of sad decisions and wanted to feel joy, control, ok, organized, strong, normal, something. That said, my mom was a goof who often spoke in what we call mammy-isms, some of which you’ll read here in italic. Never say never – I never thought I would casually sit with Vancouver’s mayor, Anne Mcenerny-Ogle, to discuss the idea of a float, its theme, and how to involve nonprofits. She was very cool to speak with and supported sending Vancouver’s first float in 30 years. The Columbian wrote a nice, accurate piece. I set out to put the pieces together: conceptualized and named the float, drew a rendering, gave local flower farmers a heads-up to secure larger quantities, worked closely with Michael Walker of VDA to spread the word and gather volunteers, and leaned on Tieton Building Co. to construct both the chassis’ structure and big, red, bouncy, one-dimensional apples. Our goal was to create a PNW scene that would resonate with both Portland and Vancouver audiences – an orchard above a field of flowers – kind of – it was abstract! I was determined to honor wholesome qualities of the Grand Floral Parade, circa 1907, so the organic design was working itself out every day. I just kept my heart on the message we were trying to send to Portland, ‘With Love, Vancouver,’ because I love Portland.

Day one at the Grand Floral Parade float barn was complete with engine failure and low-key insecurities, after all, I was an outsider-amateur who had been granted space amongst pro floatsmiths who were welding multi-dimensional, twenty-foot tall teddy bears and happy things. I did feel like the black sheep carrying mom-related grief, but also carrying over 1,000 peonies that we’d picked up from a buddy’s farm a few days prior, plus hundreds of heirloom garden roses, flats and flats of rose-scented geranium plants, and bountiful fruit branches bearing premature apples and pears. It was good. Flowers can be so therapeutic if you let them, and I did. Recommendation: when sad, buy 5,000 flowers. From that point on I was mostly ok – an over-joyed, often teary-eyed gal ready to share her heart and mind again. You are just the girl for the job, Mega-head. Show the world your smile. The problem, however, with showing the world my smile at that time was my missing tooth. Not my front tooth but two to the left. What a riot. When KGW News Channel 8 appeared to interview me in front of our half complete float – you know the rest.

We missed a detail. We didn’t realize until the eleventh hour that we were required to stay with our float and float’s escort who would tow it roughly ten miles from the float barn, near PDX, to Veterans Memorial Coliseum at 2AM driving 20MPH. It was a production in itself and even though we didn’t finally close our eyes until 5AM to rise at 6AM, I’ll never forget the visions. The escorts who come together after dark to haul floats are spectacular people – that is all.

Our Vancouver sign needed to dry overnight so we geared it up to easily screw into the float on parade day – aiming for 6:30AM. I used capitalized letter trays to spell out VANCOUVER – the kind that people might put candy in for a birthday party. Bad idea. It wasn’t pretty – like the whole sign experience was not pretty – several fails leading up to the catastrophe. Late, at 7AM, we rotated the sign upright to watch all of the rose petals slip out in a waterfall of Elmer’s Glue. One hour til showtime, I was on the asphalt without even a paper towel scraping glue from the trays when Paige, a fellow florist whom I hadn’t seen for a year, was standing above me. Paige just finished TriMet’s display and was carrying a leftover bucket of baby’s breath. Baby’s breath – a lightweight filler perfect to cut down and place in the sticky trays. To this day, when I see Paige, I think she’s an angel on foot, if one exists. Paige kindly gave me everything she had – the exact amount of product necessary to complete the sign. The City of Vancouver was awarded ‘Director’s Choice, Best Depiction of Volunteerism’.