There is probably no bit of flora that says Christmas quite like a poinsettia. Every year, Hospice and Palliative Care of Chenango County sells these festive plants to raise money for their organization, which provides compassionate care to the terminally ill.
The sale is one of Hospice’s largest fundraisers of the year and is a highly coordinated effort orchestrated by the agency’s director of development, Donna Wood Craig. Orders are taken in November and the plants themselves are delivered the beginning of December.
As part of our Delivering Christmas series, I helped with that delivery. Well, actually, my role had more to do with sorting.
Last Wednesday, I caught up with the 20 or so volunteers that Donna had enlisted for the occasion at the Norwich YMCA. The plants had gotten there a bit before me, and already carpeted much of the community room.
Sourced from a nursery in Waterville, these were without a doubt some of the most beautiful poinsettias I had ever seen. I was dazzled by their lustrous green leaves and all that vibrant red, pretty pink and creamy white.
While I loved them all, I have to admit I was particularly enamored with the pink and white marbled variety. Although, the traditional crimson were also stunning. That pink was beautiful, too, now that I think about it. And did you see the large white ones? Now, they were gorgeous ...
OK, maybe I did love them all. But what could be better than beautiful plants for a wonderful cause to get you into the Christmas spirit?
I didn’t have much time to sit back in my poinsettia-filled holiday reverie though, because there was plenty of work to be done. After all, orders had to be filled and a total of 409 plants had to be delivered to basically every corner of Chenango County.
While that may seem like a monumental task, Donna and her crew of veteran volunteers have it down to a science. Individual orders are printed on index-sized cards, sorted by destination and grouped by delivery route. Donna would carefully dole out the cards for the next route, volunteers would fill the orders and place them in the staging area. Once the previous route departed, those plants would be moved to the loading area where “quality control” would do a last check to ensure that the correct size and color poinsettias had been selected for each order. From there, they would be loaded into the car, truck or van of the waiting driver and off they went.
See what I mean? A well-oiled machine.
We continued in this fashion, with appropriate oohing and aahing over some of the most perfect specimens, until all that remained were the poinsettias reserved for local pick up. And it wasn’t even noon!
There were a few extra plants as well, but they didn’t last long. Most were snatched up by my fellow volunteers as soon as Donna gave the OK. I didn’t blame them, since if I hadn’t left my wallet back at the office, I would have done some snatching of my own.
I consoled myself, however, with the knowledge that one of the orders I’d helped fill bore the name “Stagnaro.” It was attached to a stunning red poinsettia. And one of those pink and white marbled jobs.
That mother of mine has great taste.