Growing, Growing, Gone

"I just bought roses for my mother from Tim Haley," he adds, speaking from his office in Michigan. "I know when they arrive they will have just been cut the day before and will last more than a week. The flowers from Colombia may have been shipped days before they arrive at their destination and kept on ice. They last a couple of days...if they open at all.

"Unfortunately, the consumer tends to blame the whole industry, because they don't realize that their local flower grower has been put out of business by unfair trade practices."

Hopper says he believes that economics was the major factor in the demise of domestic growers. "To what extent subsidies and the drug trade contributed to that, I don't know," he adds. "That's certainly the perception."

For Roy Obluda and his wife, the last few years in the flower business were mostly a matter of "trading dollars, trying to make enough to pay the bills," Obluda says. He was close to retirement age, and none of the kids wanted into the flower business. "By then it was evident there wouldn't be any kind of a living in it," he adds.

The couple called it quits on June 15, 1993. "Summer, everyone grows their own flowers outdoors," Obluda says. "It was always a quiet time for us, so we thought it might be easier. But it was tough. You can't do something you love for thirty years and not miss it.

"We may have been able to compete, all things being equal. But they weren't. And the government didn't really care what happened to us," he adds. "Most people, if they have a viable business, can sell it when they retire. But nobody wanted these." He points to the frames of the greenhouses.

Then Obluda smiles. "It was a good thing my wife and I discovered there is life after the greenhouse," he says, then steps into a small greenhouse tucked behind his garage. Inside are a few poinsettias, some tomato plants and one single, twelve-foot-long planter box full of carnations.

Gently touching a pink bud, he says, "I kept a little something to play with.