I’m glad it’s Friday and company is coming. My wife’s sister, her husband, and two of their long standing friends that their kids call Aunt and Uncle have arrived in Florida. They will split their time with us and other friends down in the Ft. Myers and Siesta Key areas. My brother-and-law and I may also drive down there for a moto-cross race tomorrow. The girls will, of course, go shopping and our schnauzer Tally will have full access to my comfy office chair that she fights me for every day. Dinner will be at our house tonight and we’ll go out together for Valentine’s Day on Monday. 

I bought two dozen pricy, red roses for my valentine at Florida prices. They were nearly a tenth of the cost in Texas and Oregon, so she’s used to getting more. One year I bought twelve dozen and arranged them in a huge plastic storage container for fun. It was quite the bouquet – Texas style, but has spoiled her for life. I did read, however, that the price of a dozen roses was up 22% from last year,  but it’s still possible to get a $15 bouquet on the street corner with “shorter stems, inferior quality, and a shorter time upright.”

Texas is known for the Yellow Rose in song, while Portland, Oregon does an annual rose festival and has since 1907. The “Rose City” gardens were also a popular tourist spot. However, of the 200 million roses produced for Valentine’s Day, about 80 percent came from South America, according to the Society of American Florists. The rest were mostly grown in California. Shipping costs had to have been a big factor in getting them to Florida and accounted for the higher costs this year. To quote an unknown author, “the world is a rose; smell it and pass it to your friends.”