Friday morning, April 23, 6:32 AM, and I'm walking, impressed that I'm not stumbling, into the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston with my partner designer Lisa.  She's pulling a wagon full of flowers and I've another bucket in my arms.  We're far from alone.  Forty-nine other garden clubs and a handful of floral shops from all around New England are hauling in their flowers and supplies around us.  We have three hours to complete our entry for Art in Bloom, the annual much-anticipated MFA exhibit that showcases 50 floral designs inspired by 50 different pieces of art.   

Inside is a veritable army of volunteer guides and flower associates, the volunteers who create the museum's standing floral designs year round.  I take one look at this perfectly put-together group, each outfit, expensive pair of flats, jewelry and haircut combo more perfect than the next.  I realize immediately I am not flower associate material, at least not with my current wardrobe.  Lisa later confides she wondered if every candidate gets a make over before they hit the floor.  I'm in sneakers, jeans, a striped long-sleeve T-shirt and a fleece sweatshirt, the kind of outfit I normally wear for working with flowers.  And it is the flowers, our Bells of Ireland, bright orange Gerbera daisies, minty-green mini-hydrangeas, muted plum calla lilies, gold solidago, that are the stars this morning, and I'm content to let them draw the spotlight.   The representation of the floral and plant kingdoms being wheeled through the museum doors this morning is a flower lover's Shangri-La.  I could easily lose myself walking from group to group, bucket to bucket, but I stay focused on our own project, hoping for all the world—we're first time exhibitors—that we can pull this off.       

With our assigned escort, a guide, we proceed with our packed American flyer wagon up the freight elevator and into the annals of the museum.  We pass several guards on the way, and I can't help but wonder how many billions of dollars worth of art we wander by in our morning sojourn.  Our volunteer is there to help with questions, and she later helps us clean up, but I'm very aware, she's our own personal guard.  We will not be left alone in this treasure house.  (So much for the plot of Night at the Museum and Ben Stiller wandering around on his own, the lone security guard.  I can tell you now from first-hand experience: wouldn't happen.)    

Lisa has no formal experience as a floral designer, but she is an avid  gardener, a lover of flowers, and has a great eye.  I am reviving my floral design work after about a three-decade hiatus.  (Did I just admit that?  Okay, let me at least add a detail—I worked as a floral designer in high school and my first couple years of college.)  I have never done an arrangement this large, and have no idea how the dry air of the museum will accelerate the death of the flowers.   But our biggest stressor is our container. 

Containers are often the most critical pieces of these floral designs.  Many are works of arts themselves, and a few have to be  custom-designed, employing metal artists, potters, master carpenters, you name it.  Our garden club, the Bedford club, was a late entry.  Turns out we were second on the wait list.  We get the call a couple weeks after the orientation meeting, months after the other clubs heard they were doing the exhibit, right before I'm leaving for 10 days, then returning to attend a weekend conference.   We hear we have an object, not a painting, and we are concerned.  We both want a painting.  Some of the objects assigned are really strange, especially when the chosen art is not just, say, a decrepit metal fork-looking creation, but the whole case of copper artifacts. On our private orientation visit, we hold our breath as we walk through the Chinese hall.  What will our "object" be?   But as we walk into our gallery, the Art of Asia, Oceania and Africa, to be confronted full-on by the lead case, a colorful, gorgeous Mask and Costume from Nigeria, we wonder, we wish, we hope...could it be?  Yes, this "Mask and Costume" is our piece of art, and our concern turns to excitement.    

By the time I'm back home from my travels, and Lisa and I get together to start planning, we have less than a month to exhibit time, and neither of us has curtailed our calendar to leave space for an event we didn't know we were doing.  We search and research a container.  Our festival costume depicts an ancient mother; fertility is part of the theme.  We want a black natural-material container to mirror the shape of the head.  Arising from this organic container, we envision a floral rendition of our ancient mother's headpiece, lush color representing fertile abundant life.  What we finally land on is a planter, which means we have a drainage hole.  Lisa has the idea to attempt to annihilate this drainage hole with a glue gun.  Then we line the pot with two kitchen trash bags, stick in our pre-soaked super block of green oasis (all arrangements must be in oasis) from which the flowers will drink, and hope.  More than one designer has told me this will be fine.      

Opening morning, we use almost the full three hours to create our masterpiece,  I'm surprised we've taken that long since our trial design a couple weeks ago went together in about an hour.  But we're both thrilled with the result, and so is everyone else that sees our work.  I take a deep breath and leave, but I don't relax because we've cleaned up way too much water under our container on our platform.  Lisa goes back during the day with a friend, and calls me to report water on the platform under our container again.  She wiped it off when the guards turned away.  We've heard you get called in if your container is leaking. Agh!  We don't want to hear from the museum water police!  I say I think I overwatered; hopefully, that will be the last of it.    

I'm back that night for the opening reception, to see the rest of the designs, but really, to check on ours.  We bring our husbands and come separately.  As I begin to walk through museum, even though I've been to Art in Bloom for the past few years, I'm glad I didn't remember the talent behind these creations, or I might not have volunteered.  These are all town garden clubs, but I'll eat my hat if almost every group doesn't have AT LEAST one professional designer on the design team.  Peacocks and teapots and kimonos, oh my!  Out of flowers!  The "art in bloom" on display is incredible, free form or formal, colorful or dark and moody, sparse and contemporary or abundant and impressionistic.  My husband, no museum goer, is actually finding the floral exhibit worthy of time and attention, even as interesting, in parts, as the Egyptian exhibit which grabs his attention until I remind him he's here to look at the flowers.

We reach our wing and I discover, OH MY GOD, more water under our container. My husband and I lurk so long, him pulling up his sweater sleeve and getting ready to swipe with his shirt sleeve, trying to get a moment when the guard isn't looking, I'm sure the uniformed man finally suspects we have motives.  He stays glued to the immediate area.  Finally, I walk over, say I'm the designer, and work my finger down into the container to see if there is water still in there.  There seems to be, so we don't have a full leak.  Just seepage?  Enough that our flowers won't get enough water?  Two of our Bells of Ireland are limp.   I wipe up the water, and call Lisa who is somewhere else in the museum.  She'll check it too before she leaves.  I'm stressing about our puddle the whole way home.  Can we pull the oasis and bags out, well-taped in and now holding pounds of flowers, and put in another liner?  What are our other options?  Are we going to get pulled from the exhibit before the weekend even starts?  I see Lisa later that evening.  One of us has to go in early every morning to maintain the exhibit.  I'm on tap for the next morning and she's been keeping the extra flowers in her cool basement.  She's stopped at Home Goods on the way home and found a container that is just big enough for us to put ours inside!!  It's not black, but it's sort of taupe and textured, like the full-size dummy that wears our Mask and Costume and a million times better than I ever imagine we could find.  Relief.  Lisa's found a solution, just like that.  Not a perfect one, but an incredibly good one.  I can sleep tonight. 

The next morning, there is NO WATER!!  I did overwater, and some must have seeped down outside the liner plastic.  My worry was all for naught.  I replace a few Bells of Ireland and hydrangea—losses we expected—and am ecstatic to see our other concern, the Gerberas, all in their places with sunshiny faces.  We hear accolades all weekend.  The Bedford Garden Club is thrilled.  Success is ours. Like childbirth, I've already forgotten the pain.  Will we get the chance to do this next year?  I hope so.