Big hearted blooms

some color & light in the winter night

Born out of a desire to connect and support one another in dark times, Sue Buddenbaum began Big Hearted Blooms back in 2018. Taking the remnants and scraps of what is cast off in systems littered with waste, from florists throughout the northeastern Ohio region, the volunteers and members that make up the organization are able to take in and repurpose floral arrangements into vivid new lives. Arrangements that have already been used in some way, or have reached a “point past prime”, are gathered, sorted and returned to the world in beautiful new displays of light and life, and delivered to the livers and staff of health care facilities throughout the region.

Seng is one of many volunteers that are part of the Big Hearted Blooms mission, sifting through the bouquets as they come in and rearranging them into something new

With this kind of mission and ethos held, the relationship between Rust Belt Riders and Big Hearted Blooms seems like a beautiful melding of purpose and intent. How can we begin to return and remember the threads that weave us all together, and reimagine our relationship to the discarded and disposed ?

Every time the arrangements are sorted and repurposed, the scraps that have weathered slightly more are returned to the soil through their collection and addition to the Rust Belt Riders compost flow

“We’re intercepting flowers and we’re trying to do everything we can to keep things out of landfills,” says Sue, “and so we’re very naturally aligned, in our missions and perspectives.” According to her, “it’s a commitment that is well worth it to us because everything that we do really has a sustainability motive to it.”

This alignment comes with ease as well, working along the edges with fluidity of two organizations making their way in the fast, harsh world of capital and imagined scarcity.
“I feel like you’re very easy to reach !” Sue says, “I don’t personally run the account, the person who does is on a first name basis with whoever is driving the truck, and they’ve been super flexible, you’ve been super flexible to meet our schedule, because we’re not here all day, everyday. It’s been something we’ve had to work out to make sure we’re responsive to your needs, and you’ve been very responsive to our needs, and that flexibility is really [key].”

Big Hearted Blooms co-founder Sue Buddenbaum speaks to hope and joy through petals reimagined

Following this thread allows us the opportunity to tend to the garden of the present, the sprouts reaching for the future in fragrant bloom. The joy present, whether on the face of volunteers sifting through the rainbow, those receiving the bundles of color or the box truck driver collecting petals from the compost heap, is undeniable. In a world often bereft of slow spaces and reimagining, the sparks of color allow us to step back into the moment and share it with one another.

How do we begin to enter into the space that is 2024 ? In some ways the constraints that we construct around the parameters of time, weight and other measurements can be a barrier upon our ability to thrive and connect, placing imposed frameworks that separate this flowing tendril sprouting through the topsoil from the one growing from the rhizome right here, creating a distinction where none needs to be. Arbitrary containers ? All too often we can fall under the under the weight of systems we have constructed but never built to nourish us.

Sometimes it can also be the case that sinking deeper into the cycles and seasons, the rhythms and ebbs and flows of these periods, can help us witness what has been, what continues to be, and where the path may unfold ahead, in our dreams of shared abundance. Where are we headed ? A glance where our feet have tread allows us to hold gratitude for them carrying us there, and can help us to see the light gleaming in the distance ahead.

We know that the road for our community has been littered with debris, nourishing and challenging in equal measure. The struggles of existing within this financial framework, whether as a business that holds its values and attempts to live by them in all aspects of operation or as a worker buried underneath the ever present weight of capital. We are here hoping to imbue that challenge with life, the worn hands and hours of the composter, the truck driver, the person hacking away at a computer keyboard, the community garden tender’s tattered gloves . Not reflected here and yet also very much so are the number of hours thrown into the compost pile of making sure the work gets done, the number of hours our community members took to collect what we have all in the past tossed into the garbage bin to be a weight somewhere else, where we have helped to stoke the notion of “other”. The number of hours that hands spent digging deep into the soil and planting seeds with the hope and faith that what we truly have is here, with one another, that these connections to our food, our communities, our health and one another are one and the same, where our resiliency and joy are fed in an uncertain world. The number of maggots and flies that helped to digest our organic material back into the summer’s juicy cherry tomato. The number of times a community supported compost toter lid was thrown back at a drop off site and filled with the remembrance of tomorrow.

So… numbers, two thousand twenty three. Wild and bewildering, conveying some essence and also utterly without, tiny pixels on a screen singing some gorgeous melody. Here they are

All of this only to lead ourselves back, again, the unending return. How many gardens will we tend to in this coming year ? What number of giant sunflower stalks will reach up to the sky out of the nourishing tilth that we hold ? How many new faces will we get to meet along this path, here ? Maybe we’ll sink into the soil under the sun’s warm light, together.

a winter bloom

Accumulations of the Pile - 2023 in Numbers