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<\/p>\nDeborah De La Flor has been a florist for over 40 years. She\u2019s never experienced a February like this one.\u00a0\u201cAt a time when someone is sending you an \u2018I love you\u2019 card, someone is sending an \u2018I loved you\u2019 card,\u201d said De La Flor, who is preparing bouquets and cards for Valentine\u2019s Day – the busiest and most profitable time of year for florists – while making sure other orders are filled for those who have lost loved ones to Covid-19.<\/p>\n
De La Flor, 62, runs De La Flor Florist & Gardens near Fort Lauderdale, Florida.<\/p>\n
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Three thousand miles away in Los Angeles, flower seller Fernando Perata has helped over 100 families in the past two months who have lost a family member to the coronavirus. Many of the grieving families were long-time clients.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day you see that client, the next day they are gone,\u201d said Perata, 23. He described one mother who for years had been buying flowers for her children. Recently her son and daughter arrived to buy roses for their mother\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n
Perata works in a flower-selling area of Los Angeles bordering Skid Row and the Fashion District, where 3-foot funeral crosses made of roses and white angel wings of roses on easels line the sidewalk next to Valentine\u2019s Day floral teddy bears.<\/p>\n
The $35 billion floral industry is perhaps more involved in family joy, grief and milestones than any other. Flower sellers are approaching the Feb\u00a014 Valentine\u2019s Day with the US\u00a0Covid-19 death toll near 460,000. In many states, death rates are still at record daily highs.<\/p>\n
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Mark Chatoff, 56, CEO of the California Flower Mall, one of the country\u2019s largest markets, in downtown Los Angeles, said that when California imposed its first lockdown in March, some florists closed down because of weddings, graduations, conventions and other big events disappeared almost overnight. Then came pandemic funerals.<\/p>\n
This month, Chatoff said, \u201cit\u2019s both Valentine\u2019s Day and funerals. We\u2019ve been busy because of the funerals. It\u2019s bittersweet. We are busy for the wrong reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maria Alvarez, 25, a flower seller in Los Angeles, said her managers at David\u2019s Flowers had been forced to turn away families seeking funeral flowers because of the Valentine\u2019s Day demand.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is sad. It is breaking our heart. It\u2019s really hard to tell a family we can\u2019t do flowers for their funeral,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cWe know a lot of them. They send their family member to the hospital, a few days later they have passed away. They tell us their stories. They are broken-hearted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alvarez said it\u2019s also been tough to tell grieving people how much funeral flowers cost. Because of a supply crunch, and huge demand, prices for funeral wreaths have gone from $85 to $120 in just a few weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of these families, they don\u2019t have work. This is a lot of money for them. We want to help them and give them the original price, but we can\u2019t. Flowers are so expensive right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Society of American Florists, the biggest trade group representing the US\u00a0floral industry, most flowers sold in the country are imported from Ecuador and Mexico.<\/p>\n
The surge in orders in recent months, many of them online, has strained the supply chain. That has led to a lack of space on planes and trucks to deliver enough flowers on time, said Christina Stembel, founder and CEO of Farmgirl Flowers, a national floral e-commerce company.<\/p>\n
Ken Freytag, 67, has run a family florist firm in Austin, Texas for over 40 years. He says he\u2019s generally upbeat, but this month has been tough – not least because his son, daughter and grandchildren have Covid-19.<\/p>\n
Freytag and his almost 50 employees proofread each card that is to be sent before printing and attaching it to flower orders.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of them are sympathy cards,\u201d he said. \u201cI understand what those families are going through. We are an emotion business.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Deborah De La Flor has been a florist for over 40 years. She\u2019s never experienced<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n