At home I have a place for everything and everything is in it’s place. I simply can’t relax if there’s a mess at home. I can’t sit down if I can see anything that needs tidying up or throwing out, but once everything is just how I like it there’s nothing more soothing and relaxing than the fragrance of a scented of a candle in the air.

In the shop, I’m rarely relaxed, there’s just too much to do and much to the despair of most of the florists that work with me I create lots and lots of mess. I work quickly and have no time to clear up as I go, I strip stems at record speed, throwing leaves around like confetti, clipping stems and kicking them from under my feet, while grabbing wrapping and ribbon, soaking the worktops while pouring water into aqua packs and tying them off with my teeth.

The delivery of new country chic will arrive and immediately the shop will be filled with cardboard and bubble wrap as I manically unwrap everything, trying to remember what I’d ordered and delighting everyone with my weird and wonderfully choices.

Among all this chaos I do have a system. OK from outside it’s not always easy to identify what the system is and it’s largely a paper based system which is susceptible to water-issues: when orders get wet, crucial information, such as the customer’s name, contact details and requirements could disappear in a mushy mess. And for that reason I have a fool-proof and easily accessible bulldog clip system which is kept in a safe, ‘dry’ area.

This week was a little quieter than usual, so Becky insisted that we used the time to revamp the shop. We repainted cabinets, swept, cleaned and rearranged stock, moving the scented candle shelves to a corner facing the doorway, just between the florists’ work-area and the shop floor.

Then I had a great idea….I would light one of the scented candles every day!

This way, customers would get a whiff of the woodland, herb garden or summer meadow as they walked through the door, hopefully enticing them to take one of these wonderful scents home with them.

By Friday I had burnt our way through half the scented candles in the shop, but on a positive side the shop was filled with a different scent every day and we were even drawing people in as they walked passed outside.

On the downside, in a moment of extreme busyness where I had orders piled high and didn’t have time to pin them on the relevant clips, I almost set the shop on FIRE!!!!!

A stray order form caught the breeze and landed bang on top of the naked flame of the candle and WHOOPH up it went!

Luckily there was plenty of water to hand and the ‘fire’ was extinguished pretty quickly but I was pretty lucky, if I hadn’t been paying attention then the only scent left would be ‘Burning Embers‘