- [Man] When you talk to flowers,
it's like they listen and they talk back to you.
(gentle music)
Flowers.
I got into flowers, because of my brother, actually.
Because he's the reason why I came down here.
What's it saying?
It's saying, "everything's going to be all right,
continue to blossom and bloom."
You're never going to get too old for Kool-Aid.
You bloom every day.
And that also can be another important reason why,
I kind of stayed around, stayed around here,
when my brother got killed.
Rather than leave, because I began to
get more inquisitive about flowers.
Mhmm.
And I began to,
understand why people will buy them.
They bring a joy.
From the time I wake up in the morning,
and God blesses me,
I walk out and get up and walk outta my tent,
and my first shop is right here, right next to me.
And I go in there and I make sure everything's clean.
I make sure everything is in place.
I make sure that everything is smooth.
Then it's on to the next one, same episode.
And I do this on a day-to-day basis.
I make sure all the trash is put where it's supposed to be.
And I give people a positive input.
I say, good morning.
How you feeling, how you doing?
It's gonna be a great day today,
if you didn't know that.
And God has been real good to you.
And when I begin to pass the carnations,
the roses, the tulips,
I'm visioning the color of them,
the freshness of them, and the purity,
and what they bring, what they radiate.
You have to do that,
in order to get the answers that you want.
Radiation upon me.
And then I feel the beauty that they are.
They don't miss.
And it's something that I would never
have thought would come about me.
(laughs) Flowers.
Never thought that had happen.
Cause I was a Marine for 17 plus years.
Expert marksman, sharp shooter, sniper,
military man, US MC,
United States Marine Crops.
Double dog, oorah!
And flowers is the last thing I thought I'd get into.
I thought I'd be in the cars and trucks,
you know, things of that nature.
No, flowers.
Because I had the wrong information about it
and because I had the wrong information about the flowers,
I got corrected.
Somebody set me right, and it all happened.
And the inconvenience,
I didn't want the inconvenience to be,
which is the death of my brother.
(emotional music)
My brother got killed, down here.
He got killed right around the corner,
and it was a hurt beyond any pain
that I've ever experienced in my life.
It's devastating.
It is devastating.
It's something that no matter
how much you think you can prepare for,
you can never prepare for when it hits home.
He was killed.
And I flew down here,
and I wasn't gonna leave till I killed a guy that did it.
My mission.
But I overcame that.
I came back, with a lot of help.
I was stuck.
I was stuck, in the mind.
I kept thinking back and thinking back and thinking back.
It was the fact that,
God told me, he says,
"if you keep that,
you miss all the heavenly beauty that's in front of you.
And you don't wanna miss that because it is for you."