February 2003, page 6

Assembling the Roses

By Chuck Marr

When Bob 'Valentine' Swenson proposed that our chapter consider doing a Singing Valentine Project a number of years ago, we knew that our Valentine ' package' with our song, the "Story of the Rose", and card with the printed lyrics would also need to include the traditional symbol of love - -a long-stemmed red rose. Getting 150 to 200 roses on Valentines day can be an expensive and difficult process. Every now and then having a major 'land grant' university nearby with a number of faculty in our chorus can be a big benefit - - in this case having a horticulturist from a department that teaches a course in floral design, a complete floral design laboratory, and student clubs that order wholesale roses by the hundreds, a few hundred more roses were no problem at all.

A day or two before Valentine's day, roses arrive on the K-State campus from a Kansas City wholesale florist (this year's flowers were grown in Ecuador and air-freighted to the US). Late one afternoon a crew of barbershoppers arrives at K-State's floral design lab where roses are cut under water containing a floral preservative, conditioned in a cooler for an hour or so, cut to exact length, 'de-thorned', placed in a plastic vial with floral preservative, and passed down the 'assembly line'. Additional barbershoppers add some fern greenery, place the rose and greenery in a plastic sleeve, and add a bright red ribbon. The roses are then held in floral coolers un

til quartets deliver them to the recipients.

A few minutes of work by our barbershopper assembly line not only is fun but improves our Singing Valentine profits - - this year our roses costing $1.10 each would probably sell for $7-8 in a floral shop.