Getting fakies

After burying our dead orchid (aka throwing it in the trash on top of old Chinese food), Luc and I ventured out to find a replacement flower. Luc insisted that the reason our orchid perished wasn't from my black thumb, which has claimed the lives of several other house plants, but because the flower pot is sitting in our entrance, whose only light source is a fluorescent light bulb. Someone once told me that plants can't survive without sunlight...it turns out they were right. Since I wanted flowers for the entrance table and Luc refused to let another plant wither and die uselessly, we compromised and set out to buy fake flowers.

Outside the flower shop were tons of lush, brightly coloured flowers and plants, and leaned over them was a little old lady (let's call her Mabel). One wrinkled hand was reached out towards the plants while the other rested on her walker. Watching her lift that tiny flower pot was like watching a toddler do bicep curls with a microwave. After gingerly placing the tiny pot of flowers in her walker's basket, she reached out a shaky hand to another woman walking into the store. Mabel couldn't get her walker up the front step, so she needed someone to go in and pay for the flowers on her behalf. I wanted to elbow this woman into oncoming traffic and jump to the rescue of sweet old Mabel. She was so kind and soft spoken when asking this woman to purchase the flowers for her that my heart nearly melted right out of my chest and all over the sidewalk. Kind hearted elderly folks are a rare animal in Kerrisdale - most of my encounters with old people here involve stern, disapproving looks for doing things like smiling the wrong way.

I didn't get to buy the flowers for Mabel, but we managed to find some acceptable looking fake flowers for ourselves.