Tilefortlauderdale

One woman, lots of paint and hundreds of tiles. If you're here because you found a painted tile, it's yours to keep.

Saturday, January 07, 2012

Flower Eyes

After years spent mostly in front of a computer working, working and working, Flo realized that the most valuable lessons she learned were in her garden, where her mind wandered as freely as the vines that had silently taken over her tiny estate.

While pulling weeds in her neglected garden one weekend, Flo realized that she was working her life away, basically so that she could continue paying the mortgage on a house that had become little more than a giant cubicle. Work, work and then fall into bed. The hours kept getting longer, but the pay did not increase accordingly. The more she thought about her life during the very few hours she now spent in her garden, the less sense it all made.

Flo resolved to abandon her computer, and her evil workplace, and get the hell outside. When a neighborhood blog did a little story about her transition, the article got picked up by a local newspaper that had fired most of its writers and began relying solely on bloggers who worked for free ... Apparently, many cubicle dwellers and other workers decided they liked Flo's little idea. They printed T-shirts that said Go with The Flo and several stopped working overtime. Their days of volunteering for large greedy corporations were finally over.

Instead they started digging into the earth and planting things that were beautiful, life-enriching and often edible. They began trading fruits and flowers, living in huts built from things found in nature, and eating together in the evenings. In their spare time (a term that had been long lost to many of them) they painted, made music and danced and drummed until they found their inner rhythm again. Their family members who still had to work in what they now called "the factories" to help support the gardeners dreams, were rewarded by the gardeners who were helping them to find their own secret niche so they could eventually transition out of the factories.

Pinot Grigio flowed freely at their New Year's Eve party. At midnight they raised their glasses of Blind Moose and said, Go, go, go with The Flo and then they danced like there was no tomorrow.

Flo, who has since changed her name from Florence to Flower Eyes, was dropped at Gateway Shopping Center earlier today. She's in an alley just across the street from a shop called Thousand Pound Egg and near Molly's Studio.