The Power Of Flowers And Votes In An Election Year

I’m a flower lover too, Steve. Plant bulbs in the fall. Add perennials and annuals in the spring and have almost no lawn to mow. Tiring but very satisfying.
That photo of you in front of all the tulips, shows that you don’t care about aromas when Lennie writes “about smelling the roses”. Tulips generally have very little aroma. Nor do common daffodils. But as spring harbingers in mass displays all around the community they are “stars of the show” for a couple weeks and then the flower petals dry and drop, leaving only the green leaves to continue receiving energy from the sun and sending it to the bulb, below ground, so a repeat performance can happen next year. That is the cycle, unless it is cut short.
Three weeks ago when I noticed the numerous plantings I did not know about 200,000 bulbs or the man-hours spent in preparing beds where there were none previously and planting the bulbs. Nor did I know about the thoughtful planning that went into this including the total expense that came from the taxpayers, I assume?
Snarky comments about those “exclusive suburbs” and their residents (most of whom do not read OIB) have loved flowers regularly through the years, so that going from perhaps hundreds on average in past years, 2019 gets a huge bloom because it is an election year? The folks from those suburbs do not regularly visit the City because they have the retail, foodstuff and other shopping in their own community and see no regular attraction?
Finally I must look to the Ganim playbook, page 13, where regular attention to basic expected services like public education is termed “expensive” relative to showcasing street cleaning and floral displays-less expensive distractions for voters to remember. However, when some of those youngsters entering school with all of the challenges of a poor urban family they did not choose to be born into, are not nourished (as the bulbs likely were with bone meal) and tended with well trained and compensated “gardeners” in the classrooms of the City, professionally trained, diverse and experienced staff, they will not demonstrate when it is time to blossom, 12-13 years (after quality Pre-K planting) and results turn out spotty. Failure to graduate with your original class has such different implications for stories in the “exclusive suburbs”. Why isn’t Ganim2 leading with education, similar to that which he and his children experienced, instead of ignoring the subject? Will City parents care enough in November to vote their primary interest? Or will they remember the daffodils? Time will tell.