I was happy to help set up for the American Camellia Society’s regional show in Tallahassee again this year (and secretly thankful I hadn’t been banned from volunteering after accidentally knocking over a few vases last year!)

As I wrote in my blog post, “Best in Show”, I was blown away by my first exposure to the world of competitive camellia cultivating last year.

Assuming it was the novelty of learning something totally new that had made last year such a memorable experience, I expected this year’s show to be pretty routine. But from the moment I entered the entered the drab, 70’s-era auditorium where the Camellia Show takes place, I was swept up by the energy of the camellia growers, as they anxiously worked to prepare their blooms for competition. Some were practiced veterans, others nervous newbies, but they combined to fill the room with concentric layers of excitement, shared purpose, urgency and determination as they unpacked, staged, placed and labeled hundreds of blooms.

Growing an award-winning camellia requires a combination of hard work, horticultural savvy, scientific knowledge, cooperative weather and luck. And even if you have all of those ingredients, there are no guarantees that a plant will produce a beautiful bloom – on the right day.

For the past year, each of the gardeners in this year’s competition had engaged in a wordless partnership with their plants – both had done their part, and now they could only wait to find out if the fruit of their partnership would meet the exacting standards established for the panel of judges.

My friend and award-winning camellia grower Sarah Docter Williams had gotten up well before sunrise that morning to cut hundreds of blooms from the vast assortment of camellia bushes in her backyard. She was just one of many growers huddled nervously over their flowers preparing them for display before the judges.

One by one, anxious gardeners began handing the volunteers lunchroom trays of beautiful camellia blossoms artfully poised in tiny glass vases. For the next two hours, we shuttled a steady stream of trays into a room lined with tables where we placed the vases alphabetically in orderly rows organized by class, species and name.

I was surprised by the vicarious satisfaction I experienced through the very small – and mechanical – role I played in the process. I was literally just taking trays of flowers from the growers in the foyer and placing them on tables in another room. But something magical was occurring in those handoffs with the growers.

When I complimented a tray of beautiful blooms a young teen handed me, she beamed with pride and told me her grandfather had grown them, not her. She more proud of her grandfather’s efforts than his exquisite flowers. She was proud that he had invited her to help him prepare his blooms for the show. The blooms he had worked so diligently and lovingly to produce. That he wanted her to understand the joy that comes from a hard effort – especially one that produces beauty. What priceless life lessons that man has planted in his granddaughter’s heart.

Cultivating and caring for plants – and sharing their beauty with others – lifts all of us up. It can bring out our better angels – the parts of our humanity that are wired to care for, nurture and celebrate one another.

Flowers are not accidental creations. They may not have obvious practical utility in our lives, but their beauty is purposeful. It can be transformational, if we allow it. If we allow ourselves to be awed by the miracle of their beauty, as C.S. Lewis wrote, we may find ourselves “surprised by joy” – even when we are surrounded by ugliness.

When I left the auditorium that morning and turned on my car, I was quickly sobered by a news update. It was an unwelcome dose of reality, but it helped me appreciate that beauty in nature can be an antidote to the chaos we humans create all around us.

We are in the middle of a long stretch of cold winter weather right now, but when spring finally arrives, I am going to plant more flowers. A LOT more flowers.

“When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4)