Friday, October 1, 2010

Road Trip To Easton

For those of you who don’t know, my dear friend Marina moved to Easton two weeks ago.

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Marina and her husband Bart were our first friends when we moved to Baltimore 11 years ago. Bart and I had been friends growing up in Buffalo, but hadn’t seen each other in at least ten years when we moved to Baltimore.

marina2 He and Marina were our neighbors and friends in a city where we knew no one. How lucky I was to have found Marina. She is truly one of the most amazing, talented, wonderful women I have ever met. Our friends have a joke, if someone doesn’t know how to do something-anything from sewing curtains, making jams, cooking a certain vegetable, growing a certain plant, baking a buckle, canning -anything-we always say: “marina would know”.

Marina’s wedding was the first wedding I ever did flowers for. We went through the Master Gardening program together, we worked in each others gardens, we went to Flower Design class together. We went on flower road trips together.

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And then we started locoflo. Marina’s a superb designer. She was a creative eye with a bent toward more natural, integrated designs. She loves color and has a confidence when designing that allows her to try new things-things that would make me nervous! She is inspiring to watch and work with.

Florists

But alas, she’s left Baltimore. And for me personally and professionally, there is now a hole that probably won’t ever be filled.

But today I realized-that Easton’s not that far away. When Finn and Marina and I went on our tour of Easton, Marina told me (about 2 seconds before it happened, with one quick breath) that there was a little florist shop at this little market and the girl there grew her own flowers and that she wanted me to meet her-and that she wanted to meet her too.

Of course, in typical Marina fashion, our impromptu meeting went great! I’ll write more about our new grower/florist friend from Seaberry Farm in my next post but suffice it to say- her flowers were beautiful, she has a huge farm growing acres of woodies, she said she’s always looking for workers, she has kids Finn’s age and she invited Marina on a play date! SWEET!

Easton

After a yummy lunch at the Railway Market, I said a teary good bye and headed back to Bmore. While I was sad to be leaving Marina, I was happy that she was still close-and was feeling hopeful that our adventures in locally grown flowers would continue-albeit long distance for now.

Lovely, lovely day.

5 comments:

  1. Sniff! We all miss Marina. Glad you had a great day. I'll have to get out to Easton soon.

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  2. That made me cry. What a beautiful statement about your friendship. I love Marina.

    - Cathy

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  3. Wow! That was so sweet, Ellen. You are both incredible women. And I am so inspired by Locoflo. You ladies rock! I'm so glad that Carla introduced me to you both!

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  4. I love this post, very nice Ellen....Baltimore will miss Marina :-)

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  5. I will miss Baltimore for all the friends that come with it! Thank you soo very much for visiting me last week, it really made things seem so much better!
    All my love
    marina

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