As we start to tangle and argue over re-opening our country, I’d just ask that we put emotion, bias and fear aside and let common sense be our guide.

For example:

I can go to our busy Lowes or Home Depot this morning and buy flowers for my garden.

Meanwhile, our locally owned, family run, garden centers are considered non-essential businesses and are still closed.

Not only is this an unfair advantage for some companies..

but think about the logic (or lack thereof) :

If I can go inside a crowded grocery store to buy tomatoes, why can’t I go to an outdoor, garden center to buy a tomato plant? Maybe classifying activities as “safe,” “less safe” or “not safe” would have made better sense than trying to determine what was “essential.”

Thanks to nice weather, boredom and the fact that everyone is home, local residents have been busy planting, pruning and mulching their gardens like never before. 

This is a one-time, unique surge in business that our local garden centers have totally lost out on.