Sunday is Mother's day, and CVOID 19 has made more meaningful, but gift giving has never been more difficult. Meaningful, because we all appreciate life a little more when we know that a quarter million people have died worldwide form COVID-19. But, difficult because where the heck are you gonna get that bouquet that's worthy of your one and only mother?
It's a problem because most of Belize's flowers come across the border form Chetumal and that border has been closed for 6 weeks.
For florists, that has meant improvising - and this morning Cherisse Halsall went searching to find if a rose by any other name would look as lovely:
With the state of emergency closing the borders, it means limited imports, and no flowers from Chetumal, we wondered how florists were improvising in a time of scarcity. We found out that there is another kind of scarcity, scarcity of business!
Selbert Butler, Owner, SelFlor Designs
"Well not much, I have some orders and i'm trying to finish those orders with some customers who try their best to give their mother something for mother's day usually, we have a lot of flowers but because of the coronavirus, we can't import any stuff so we have to improvise and use locally produced flowers."
"It's the same concept as if it was imported flowers you just have to use more greenery more than flowers to make it look full."
Cherisse Halsall:
"With the borders completely closed there's no possible..?"
Selbert Butler, Owner, SelFlor Designs
"No possible way to get flowers and I don't even want to risk going backdoor because you might get caught and spend three months in jail. It isn't worth it."
But florists don't have to be risking jail time to push ahead and over at Florasol we saw an even wider array of Belizean Blooms.
Carla Hart, Co-owner, FLORASOL
"People love their mom's Belizeans love their mom's and we've been accepting orders worldwide so it's always hectic. This year though, because of the limitations at the borders we weren't able to import our stargazers, roses, and those other varieties in time for mother's day. So we are limited to locals which are tropicals, orchids, and other local varieties of flowers so that has added some pressure to us because the quantities that we would have liked are not available. So we have had to be creative and add plants and baskets to our line up this year."
"A combination of colors so yellow with purple and light greens and oranges and the red from the firebirds. There's gold from what we call the maraca flower. So we've played with a combination of colors and we have a lot of greenery as you can imagine in the leaves so we have the ferns, all different color leaves, red leaves, purple leaves, yellow leaves, and that combination has created some stunning bouquets."
"I have driven over 500 miles familiarizing myself with and I am amazed at what our local plants, farmers are doing."
And Belize's bounty isn't limited to flowers; there's also a wonderful array of fresh produce which one restaurateur is using to create an alternative mother's day bouquet. Even so, she's also struggling through closed border limitations.
Candice Itza, Owner, EAT FIT/Amini's
"As we all know we're facing the CORONA at the moment and the borders are closed so some of the nicer fruits, the exotic fruits I wasn't able to get such as blueberries and strawberries. So that was one difficulty that I did face indeed."
"We're doing a fruit arrangement some of the fruits are carved into flowers dipped in chocolate, drizzled with different chocolate, sprinkles, putting it as an elegant vibrant fruit arrangement, something to brighten up mothers on their special day."
"It's edible, they taste it, you could share it, more than one person can enjoy it, and it's just a delightful taste on your tongue. So we combine what they're used to, fruits cut into the shapes of flowers, you get the healthiness of the fruit and they still get a treat with some of the chocolate drizzled over it."
"From start to end it's a process to organize what arrangement you would like to put together to cut out the fruits, it's work, to get the fruits we see that's the hassle already and melting the chocolate everything is a process it takes time, and people like to know they are getting what they ask for so in order to please it takes time so for every little detail, and I'm kind of OCD a little bit, so it is time-consuming, but if you do it with love. People will be happy when they receive it and just the look on their faces makes it all worth it."
And Florasol's Carla Hart told us that while flowers could not be imported in time for mother's day, they are cargo, and cargo is allowed to be imported. She says that while her employees are currently restricted from crossing into Mexico to make selections, brokers will be able to ship orders moving forward.
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