Tulip time: Spend your money wisely. It’s a decision.

I just dug up my tulips this week. They don’t like to lay the way I want them to for photography purposes.

This weekend is Bulb Mart at the Botanical Center. The Botanical Center is a government-run organization, and the Friends group that supports it is a small, non-profit volunteer group. When I saw that my fall-flowering crocuses (colchicum) were sending out leaves, I knew that I should start looking at dates for this year’s Bulb Mart. If the Friends were holding one this year, I wouldn’t want to miss the sale. I walked away from the bulbs at a larger store, but the itch was hitting me hard to buy something.

After choosing my bulbs (Allium and Ipheion) under the greenhouse roof yesterday, one of the gals asked how I knew about their Bulb Mart. I said, “I’ve shopped here before and I was just at a bigger store, saw that it was selling bulbs, and knew it was time to look for Bulb Mart.”

 “I want my dollars to go some place that counts.”

Now this blog post could go a couple ways — the garden story, or the money story, and I’m choosing the money story. I’ll share my garden story later. It’s a long-term project. 🙂 I’m not writing this to applaud myself, but to encourage you to ‘vote’ with your dollars.

My husband and I both grew up with self-employment in our families, my mother purposely chose a local business over a chain for my wedding cake, and Mr. TellBlast and I continue to work for ourselves and local non-profit groups. Your money makes a HUGE and extremely impactful difference to this group of people.

So why did I visit a Starbucks instead of the locally-owned coffee house yesterday? I know what you mean. Since taking up a seasonal job at Victoria’s Secret, I have met many struggling workers. Bright people, nice folks. I go to Starbucks (or shop at the mall) every now and then because employees there are our neighbors, and currently not in a situation to work with or have a locally-owned business. I don’t have a lot of dollars to spend, so the dollars I do have require a decision, and I want that decision to be right for me. So I can sleep well.