What are those Olympic medal winners holding aloft?

We have to admit it's not the most telegenic bouquet we've ever seen. The designers, June Strandberg and Margitta Schulz, said they wanted the bouquets to reflect British Columbia and "look natural, like something you would see if you drove up the mountain." As you can tell from the medal ceremonies, that's not the look the design panel wanted. The powers-that-be chose a rather severe design that includes green spider mums, green hypericum berries, aspidistra leaves, leatherleaf fern and monkey grass. Between 80 and 150 bouquets are being made each day, many by novice florists trained by Ms. Strandberg in a program she runs for women who are in recovery, victims of violence or ex-convicts. By the time the last medal is awarded, they will have turned out a total of 1,800 bouquets. Having dealt with some difficult clients in our time, we'd like to award a gold medal for perseverance to Ms. Strandberg and Ms. Schultz. By the time the design panel had finished tweaking their original design, they'd gone through 23 samples.

Designers June Strandberg and Margitta Schultz deserve their own gold medal for endurance and perseverance.