Ida Mayes Floristry
I still remember walks with my mom as a small child, stopping every few feet, pulling my hand from hers in order to closer inspect a blooming weed or a dainty wildflower forcing its way through the cracks in the sidewalk. I wanted to see it up close, touch it, smell it, soak in every morsel of its being. My uninhibited curiosity and delight was a gift. Even if only for a time, childhood allowed me a moment of blissful ignorance, joyfully unaware of what might lie ahead and completely consumed with the beauty of that single flower.
Childhood provided me some sense of shelter from the real world, at least for a time. Many years later, I would begin to reflect on the blissfully unaware innocence of my childhood and yearn for it. I would find myself craving a sunny day with a light breeze, an evening stroll, the smell of roses growing in the garden, a fresh-baked apple pie, birds waking me from sleep and intimate conversations with loved ones. I would crave simplicity and uninhibited curiosity.
As I aged, my innate gene of responsibility steered my goals from ones of simplicity and peace to practicality and sustainability. With adulthood comes reality, blissful ignorance becomes a thing of the past and simplicity is replaced with practicality.
In our second year of marriage, my practical-focused-mind steered me toward a career change from social work to nursing. I romanticized the job in order to build excitement for my future, believing I was not only doing something important, but also something smart and stable. During these years, the ache for simple joys grew strong. It was during these four years that I developed a friendship with Linda of Aunt Willies Wildflowers and became one of her “farm kids”—a title I continue to wear proudly.
There is nothing like an idyllic flower farm, set amongst rolling hills with cows gently mooing in the distance and lunches on the porch swing with a Ruby Red drink in hand to make you question life’s priorities. If I’m being honest, this was really the beginning of the end of my nursing career.
Time has a way of resetting your perspective. When we lived in Tennessee, everything was school-focused for both my husband and I. We were poor and tired, each working multiple jobs wanting only to be done and move on with the next portion of lives. Our time in Tennessee came to a close and we left our dearest friends and that idyllic farm I’d come to love so much. We ventured South to Texas and suddenly, there were no more farm days with lunches on the porch and warm conversations. There were no more flowers to cultivate or bouquets to design. My scenery was concrete and my days were filled with sterile hospital rooms and unsafe nurse-patient ratios. This was not my dream and although it seemed futile, I didn’t stop searching for it.
The next few years, I worked my way out of direct patient care into nurse marketing and insurance roles. Anything that seemed more broadly applicable to other occupational outlets without “wasting” my degree. I found a local flower farm to volunteer at and began freelancing for multiple florists in the Austin area on the weekends. Eventually taking on my own weddings in a very limited capactiy while continuing my full-time nursing job.
And then one day it happened.
My husband graduated from his PhD program and the puzzle pieces fell into place. It wasn’t planned or expected, there wasn’t an obvious shift in wedding income. The pieces just suddenly fit and all those little projects I’d cultivated, the connections I’d made, the reviews I’d accumulated and the administrative processes I’d slowly been perfecting all came together to create something beautiful, practical and enjoyable as a full-time endeavor. Ida Mayes Floristry was born and I now have a business I am so proud of that honors the women in my family and strives to serve others in the selfless fashion that they embodied every single day.
In some sense, becoming Ida Mayes felt sudden, out-of-the-blue, but in reality, it was a 10-year process of cultivating a dream. It wasn’t always a conscious dream, sometimes just an idea or a hint of inspiration, but it was always there, from my blissfully unaware childhood to “farm kid” to freelancer to business owner.
Listen to your dreams. Pay attention to those little nudgings that pull repeatedly at your heart throughout the years. Look for what is constant, what remains despite your circumstance. Never give up hope and always be searching for opportunities.
I inherited my love of flowers and gardening from my grandmothers. So I like to think that my love of flowers was inescapable, a gift passed down from one woman to the next. Flowers are a part of who I am and where I come from.
My garden is my happy place and seeing new growth makes me squeal with delight.
I’m a flower obsessed 30-something who cries at every single wedding. I believe love is beautiful and sharing in that beauty is an honor.
I’m overjoyed & incredibly humbled each time a client chooses to trust me with their wedding flowers. It brings me so much joy to bring flower dreams to life.