Flowers insolita Blog

We are located in Long Island, the Island of Lindsay Lohan and spoiled brats.

I was talking to the owner of a nursery the other day.  He was complaining how difficult it is to find “decent young people” to work in his establishment.  I often hear the same story from many small retail-business owners here; young people in Long Island do not want to work in their stores. 

Come to think of it, in the last three years, we have hired about two dozen young local people (all of them are female); only two lasted more than three months.  One lasted only 3 hours, which is the current record of the shortest tenure of our past employees.

Take a look at any fast-food restaurants in Long Island.  Do we see any young Long Islanders working there?  I don’t think so.  Flipping burgers is not a kind of job that princes and princesses in Long Island would take.  Too much of a work for too little pay, just like a job in a flower shop or nursery for that matter.

I often go to a local supermarket (STOP & SHOP) to buy fresh fruits used for fruit baskets.  There are a couple of young people “working” there.  By “working”, I mean a) chatting with friends and b) text-messaging, while paying absolutely no attention to customers.

The other day, I was in the self-service checkout.  One of my items didn’t go through.  I dared to press “Help” button, which I shouldn’t have.  After several minutes, a young lady reluctantly showed up.  I explained the situation to her.  Annoyed by this unexpected extra work, she sighed to my face.  If one of our sales associates ever sighed to our customer asking for help, I guarantee you that she would be fired on the spot. I’m usually pretty quiet, not complaing about anything.  But I wasn’t having a good day on that particular day, so I told her, “But you are paid, right?”  To which she replied “You’re mean!”  The Princess spoke and I humbly accepted my defeat.

I sighed… I wonder if the manager of STOP & SHOP knows this.  Whoever the manager is, my guess is that s/he probably knows about it, but can’t do anything about it.  That’s because, if s/he complains, these kids would simply quit, creating a vacancy that s/he would have to fill again with, what, the same kind of kids.  There’s no realistic chance that the next one would be better.  Worse yet, their parents might sue the shop or manager for whatever reasons they come up with.  Not worth the fight. 

Department of Transportation (DOT) has compiled the reportable* car-crash data on the “State Roads” in Long Island (i.e., about 1/4 of all the accidents). According to the data, Southern Parkway has five of the ten most accident-prone sections.

Here’s the map showing the worst 91 locations in Long Island. Check it out!

* An accident is “reportable” if it resulted in death, injury, or property damage over $1,000.

Today we had a very severe thunderstorm in the early morning hours. Almost all the major roads got flooded.

I was delivering flowers to a recipient in Halesite, driving on New York Ave (Rt 110) up to the North. Near King Kullen supermarket, I encountered a big pool of water in front of me, so I stopped.

There was a car splashing water in the pool. Apparently, the driver had decided to take a chance and went right into it. The car was spinning. I think the driver was trying to turn around, but she obviously couldn’t because the tires lost grip of the road.

Then she started honking, as if she needed help. Yeah, right, you need help. A couple of guys were watching from the parking lot and one guy was shouting something to her, but I couldn’t hear.

But seriously, there wasn’t anything she really needed help for, especially when she kept her car splashing water like that. I wouldn’t go near that spinning car. All she had to do is to give up, stop the engine, walk out, buy a cup of coffee, and wait.

Apparently, there were hundreds of “brave” drivers like her all over Long Island today, causing unnecessary problems for emergency workers.

What’s funny is that every time we have a storm, they tell us not to drive into a pool of water even if it might look shallow. And every time, lots of people ignore the warning, just to embarrass themselves like those in the following pictures (from Newsday)

(Looks like Honda drivers are over-confident of their car’s ability)

Her husband was just arrested. From local CBS News:

“(CBS/AP) HUNTINGTON, N.Y. The estranged husband of a woman who was found shot to death in a bagel store was arrested Friday on charges of second-degree murder, police said.

… Robert Anderson, 66, was arrested later that afternoon at his sister’s home, said Suffolk County police spokeswoman Audrey Marrone.

… Ann Anderson, 39, had an order of protection against her husband, but it didn’t include their business in Huntington, Marrone said.

… The husband told police he knew that his wife didn’t lock the door of the store after she opened, and he entered to discuss how to divide their assets. He told detectives that he became enraged and shot her, said Suffolk county detective Jack Fitzpatrick.”

more from Newsday

The owner of “Super Bagel” in Huntington Village, near intersection of Wall St & Gerard St, was shot to death early this morning. Read Newsday Article here.

At this moment, it is not clear whether this is an armed robbery or something else. Our village is usuaully a very safe place to operate a business. This kind of news really gets to our nerves.

Our sincere condolence goes to the family and friends of Ms Anderson, the owner.

Channel 4 Video 

We are experiencing a heavy snow-freezing rain today (Mar 16th, Fri).  According to the forecast, it will become worse; they are saying it will be 3-6″ snow!

This will be the second “killer” snow storm in 2007.  “Killer” because it really kills retail businesses.

As you might recall, we had a nasty snow-ice storm on the Valentine’s Day.  Many florists were hard-hit, but the hardest hit was on gift shops and restaurants.  Many restaurants here lost a HUGE business on the Valentine’s Day (50-90% cancellation rate). 

They were hoping to recover some of the loss on this coming St Patrick’s Day (Mar 17th).  Now another snow-ice storm!  This is really bad, but hey, life goes on.

There are many exotic town names in Long Island, especially in Suffolk county, such as Ronkonkoma, Hauppague, etc. Non-Long-Islanders can’t even pronounce them correctly.

If you are a Long Islander, you probably know that these names came from Native Americans’ language. But do you know the meanings?

• Amagansett: “place of good water”
• Aquebogue: “head of bay”
• Commack <- Winnecomac: "pleasent land"
• Copiague: “sheltered harbor”
• Coram <- Winnecoram: "passage between hills or a valley"
• Cutchogue <- Corchaug (?): "principal place"
• Hauppague: “overflowed land”
• Massapequa: “great water land”
• Matinecock: “hill country”
• Mattituck: “great creek”
• Manhasset <- Manhansett: "island neighborhood"
• Montauk: “uncertain”
• Noyack: “a point or corner of land”
• Patchogue <- Pochaug (?): "where a river divides"
• Poquott: “cleared land”
• Quogue <- Quaquanantuck: "cove or estuary"
• Ronkonkoma <- Raconkamuck: "boundary fishing place"
• Setauket: “land at the mouth of creek”
• Speonk: “high place”
• Syosset <- Suwasset (?): "place in the pines"

– References —

Long island history at Newsday

and a lot of Google search.  Please let us know if you find any error or omission.

OK, this has absolutely nothing to do with flowers, but…

Do you watch “The Apprentice” on NBC? You may not like Donald Trump (not many people do), but do you know that four of the Apprentice hopefuls actually have connection to Long Island (one of them was already “fired”)?

Martin “The Philosopher” Clarke, an Atlanta-based attorney, was born in Amityville and graduated from Adelphi University. In the first episode, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter, told him, “I don’t like the way you talk … the way you project yourself…. I feel everything you say is rhetoric…” while he was trying desperately to explain himself out of a tight spot. He was fired.

Marisa “The Politico” De Mato, also an attorney, grew up in Centereach.

Angela “The Olympian” Ruggiero, is a three-time Olympic ice-hockey player and lives in Oyster Bay. Gold medal in 1998; Silver medal in 2002; Bronze medal in 2006. Wow!

Jenn “The Blonde” Hoffman, is a publicist who grew up in Huntington.

Here in Long Island, Canada goose is seen everywhere – park, golf course, parking lot, school yard, and so on. Not everyone likes this large bird (wing span 5-6 feet), because their droppings are proportionally large and they do it whenever and wherever they feel like doing it.

Fortunately to Canada geese, the bird is under Federal protection through the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. This act makes it unlawful to hunt, kill, sell, disturb nests, purchase or possess migratory birds except as permitted by regulations adopted by the Secretary of the Interior.

One local golf course, Cold Spring County Club, is also annoyed by Canada geese who usually hang out around its ponds, pooping all over the place. One day, apparently, the Club managers got this brilliant idea: install fake dogs around the pond to scare the geese off!

Thus a half dozen of scary-looking fake dog, painted black, were placed around the pond (click on the picture to enlarge).

Alas, the geese are loving it! They kind of hang out near the dogs, showing absolutely no sign of being scared (click on the picture to enlarge).

Obviously, Canada goose is smarter than whoever came up with this brilliant idea.

This reminds me of this funny picture of a pigeon sitting right on top of a “fake owl” which supposedly repells pigeons (click on the picture to enlarge).