Snapdragons and Gum Tips
Over the road from my parents cake shop in Box Hill when I was a boy, was the Box Hill Florist. The Florist was next to Jacky Walters Butcher Shop. It was run by a very tall, distinguished looking man with grey clipped moustache and cloth Yorkshire cap by the name of Mr. Ellis.
Mr. Eric Ellis was a very upright citizen, a leading member of the church, and an active participant of all of the meetings of the Box Hill Progress Association.
But he also was one of my friends, and one of those shopkeepers into whose shop I regularly went in those years before I started school, but when I was too old to be close to my mother’s apron strings. Until I was a teenager, I would wander in and out of all the shops talking to my older friends.
There were much more exciting shops around town of course the shipwrights and chandlers with all of their metal work and exciting visions of running away to sea, or the men’s barber with its unusual fragrances, and the sight of a man lying back in a chair swathed with the white sheet while someone lathered his face with shaving soap and then stropped the cut throat razor. These were exciting shops.
But Mr. Ellis the florist was a kindly man who took an great interest in a young boy.
My mother frequently gave me some money to go over Station Street to the florist to buy our regular weekend order on a Friday afternoon. My mother had the idea that the house, on a weekend, was some place special where guests or relatives or visitors could drop in and find a tidy place with a welcome and hospitality that would make them feel like returning.
The centre of our home was our lounge room in the front of the small half house which we had. My mother and father and four children plus my slowly dementing grandmother lived in half a house which had two and a half bedrooms, a bedroom for my parents and youngest sister, a bedroom for my grandmother, and half a bedroom not much more than an enlarged hall cupboard in which the three of us children slept, a kitchen and the lounge room.
This front room was always kept “for good”. It was here visitors and guests were entertained. Every Friday night we would carry home a bunch of fresh gum tips and a couple of bunches of flowers from the florist. According to the season, we would have iceland poppies, or snapdragons, or phlox but always there would be a display of fresh flowers in the front room.
Snapdragons were always a favourite and from as early as I can remember I would often help Mr. Ellis as he would bunch his flowers telling me something about the name and tradition of the flowers he would bunch ready for the sales later in the day. I used to squeeze the heads of the snapdragons at the sides making the front mouth open ready to devour anything that came along.
His shop always smelt of sweet perfume, of fresh gum leaves and of bunches of flowers in season.
Out the back of his shop he had cultivated the small area of land for growing special flowers in different seasons. For example, he always had a good crop of white flowers from daisy bushes for Mothers Day, and flowers come to bud in time for Christmas.
The soil in his backyard plot was rich black loam. With every bunch of flowers, there was a coloured sheet of tissue paper put in before the brown paper which wrapped it up and kept the moisture from the stems of the flowers from soiling the garments of those who carried them home.
There was one section of his backyard where he carefully cultivated violets.
These smallest and sweetest of all flowers he grew in profusion. He would pick them and sell them in bunches, especially when it came to Mothers Day and Easter.
On the Friday before one Mothers Day, Miss Perry, who was the forelady in my mother’s shop, asked me if I had arranged to get some flowers for Mothers Day. I was probably five years old at the time and I am quite sure she would have offered to buy some flowers for me to give to my mother if I had indicated that I had not thought of it. But rather than be caught out, I made some comment that I had planned already what I was going to do for Mothers Day.
As I left the shop and thought about what it was that I had planned for Mothers Day, I realized I had two options: 1. to pick a bunch of onion weed plants that grew along the side of the railway line, or, 2. somehow or other get a bunch of violets for Mothers Day.
I had picked a bunch of onion weed flowers on one occasion, brought them home and given them to my mother quite proudly. It was only years later that I understood that the foul smelling plant was not intended to be offered as a gift. But on that occasion my mother accepted them with dignity and saw in the foul smelling flowers the love of the boy who gave them to her. However, on this occasion, I was not moved to onion flowers.
Which meant I was left with the option of somehow getting some violets. Where could I find some violets?
I then remembered all of the violets growing in the plot behind Mr. Ellis the florist’s shop. At this time of day Mr. Ellis was always busy in his shop. He very rarely went out the back. A plan immediately formed in my mind. Quickly running up Bank Street and then down the lane which ran behind the shops I stopped at the backyard gate of Mr. Ellis. It was unlocked. No one was in sight. Slipping in I very quickly squatted down among the rows of violets and started to pick a bunch of violets to give my mother. Soon I had about twenty purple blooms safe in hand. All of a sudden a big voice spoke from a huge man standing immediately behind me: “What are you picking those violets for?” boomed the voice of Mr. Ellis. I swung round and saw him standing immensely tall behind me. His face had the most hurt and puzzled look upon it. I knew instantly how my stealing must have hurt him especially as he would have regarded me as a friend and someone to trust.
Before I could explain my reason I began to cry. Through blubbering tears I told him I wanted to pick a bunch violets to give my mother for Mothers Day.
I will never forget what happened next. He roared at me! “You do not steal flowers to give to people! If you haven’t any money I will give them to you!” And then shaking me he said “It is not the stealing of the flowers that has hurt me, but the way you have picked them. Do you see what you have done? You have pulled off the flowers leaving most of the stem behind, or you have pulled up the stem pulling some of the roots out of the loam. That will cause the plant to die. You may have picked a bunch of flowers but in doing so you will have destroyed several plants.” Then the great man softened and his voice became quiet “Kneel down here. See how I am picking these plants see how I run my finger down the stem to the bottom, then pinch it and twist it so it comes away leaving the plant still in the soil to grow more flowers? See how I place this flower with its long stem in my left hand then pick another with my right hand and lay it alongside evenly until I have twenty flowers? See how I place three leaves around the bunch? See how I take this piece of string, wind it round the bunch of the flowers and tie it firm but not to too tight so as to break the stems? That is how you pick a bunch of violets.”
The demonstration went on as the lecture continued. Then Mr. Ellis stood and put his hand on my shoulder and said “I want you to pick twenty bunches of violets for me and if you do that I won’t say a word about this to your mother.” With that he turned and walked back into the shop leaving me alone.
Eventually the blubbering ceased and the tears which had been running down my face dried, and with a sniff or two I settled down to work at picking the flowers. With my right hand I ran my fingers down to the bottom on the stem, then pinched and twisted and laid the flower in my left hand. Twenty times I did that until twenty blooms were there. Then three leaves were picked and placed around them, and then the piece of twine to tie them, not too tight in case I should break the stems. One bunch was finished. Then a second bunch was finished. I never realized what hard work it was to pick a bunch of flowers. Soon there were five bunches and then ten. I did not dare move from the rows of violets until twenty bunches were picked.
I placed them all in a couple of sheets of newspaper and carried them up into the shop. Mr. Ellis was alone in the shop and had been watching my progress from the back window. Once inside the shop he said “We will never talk about this matter again. What happened this afternoon has happened between you and me and no one need know anything more about it. I hope you never forget how to pick flowers properly and I hope you realize that when you steal from a man you take away not only his living, but you are also destroying his future income.”
I understood what Mr. Ellis said.
Then he said a strange thing: “Go back down and pick one more bunch and make it the biggest bunch of the best violets you can pick.” I picked twenty five of the biggest and most beautiful blooms, three leaves and wound them with the twine. I took them back to him. “This bunch is for your mother,” he said and he wrapped it up in the beautiful purple tissue paper that he used especially for violets. As I left the door he called out, “And don’t forget to wish her Happy Mothers Day from me too.”
I always felt as if Mr. Ellis was one of the wisest men that I had ever met.
Years later when I was doing the rounds of various Sunday Schools speaking at Sunday School Anniversary Services, I visited a church in Mount Albert and to my surprise discovered that the Sunday School Superintendent was the same Mr. Ellis the florist. He had a thriving Sunday School with hundreds of children. He knew them all by name, patted boys on the head and talked to girls like a grandfather.
The children adored him.
But I had special reason to remember him. I often thought of him as I walked passed his shop which proudly bore on the front window his name “Box Hill Florist, Mr. E. Ellis, Proprietor”, and as I walked up Bank Street along the railway line to the top of the hill to No.5 Miller Street, Box Hill, a great city which was once a village, where the adults were kind and the children grew up responsibly.
