World of Good Blogburst, Floral Style

Welcome to another weekly World of Good (WOG) here at The Scratching Post.

This WOG was inspired by my mother. All through her life she has been active in charity organizations and has generously donated her time to others. She is an accomplished and talented woman in many ways. She is a flower show judge, has won countless awards for her flower arrangements, has been president of garden clubs just about everywhere we've lived and has been repeatedly asked to participate in the San Diego Museum of Art's annual Art Alive program where floral artists produce and display flower arrangements suggested by the paintings in the museum. She brings beauty and grace into the world every day.

My favorite charity work of hers were the times she and some of her colleagues from the local garden club went to a foster home for abused children and spent the day doing flower arrangements and crafts with them. The children had survived horrible atrocities by their families and had been placed in the foster care system. My mother and her friends brought tranquility and love into their lives by introducing them to a gentle art that taught them to see their world in a different way.


Today's WOG is about Mary McLanathan, a woman much like my mother, who does volunteer flower arrangements in the town of Los Altos, California. I came across an article about her in the Los Altos Town Crier.

Mary McLanathan's love for flowers blossomed during her childhood on an apricot and prune ranch in Los Gatos.

"My mother loved flowers, especially cabbage roses," McLanathan said. "The Japanese nurseryman who helped with her big flower garden always said, if you have $1 to spend on your garden, spend 75 cents of it on fertilizer."

Today, the down-to-earth McLanathan is "retired" but leads a life powered by flowers.

She rises at 3 or 3:30 a.m. every Friday, drives herself to the San Francisco Flower Market on Brannon Street, and purchases enough seasonal blooms and foliage to fill 15 buckets...and over the next day and a half creates three huge flower arrangements - one for St. William Catholic Church in Los Altos and two more for chapels located on the grounds of the Seton Provincialate in Los Altos Hills.

"Her arrangements help identify who we are," said associate pastor Kathy Schlosser of St. William. "A picture of one of them is on the cover of our membership directory."

Rev. Michael Burns, pastor of St. William Catholic Church, calls it a labor of love. "She's fantastic," he said. "She uses absolutely every kind of flower, branches of fruit trees, sometimes nothing but beautiful greens - but she doesn't want anyone to watch her arranging and she's never completely pleased."

"I sit there during morning Mass, critique what I did, and I see how I could make an arrangement better, and I can hardly wait to go up and change it," McLanathan said.

Her high standards made her the respected dean of biological and health sciences at Foothill College for 18 years, where she taught biology, bacteriology, zoology, anatomy and botany.

McLanathan is modest to a fault - "Please keep any story about me low-key; I just do whatever I can," she said - and she doesn't keep exact track of her own volunteer work. As far as anyone knows, she has been arranging flowers at St. William's for more than 15 years, because that job preceded her volunteer flower arranging at the Seton Provincialate, off Altamont Road in Los Altos Hills.

"One day I was watering my arrangement inside the St. William's sanctuary and I heard a knock on the door. It was two nuns from Seton saying they liked my arrangement on the altar that week and asking if I would do a special arrangement for their celebration of their patron saint, St. Vincent de Paul, on Sept. 27 that year. I did that one and then have been arranging for them ever since."

"Mary has been making beautiful, graceful arrangements at our Provincialate Chapel and the Laboure Chapel for about 15 years," said Sister Cecilia Van Zandt, Seton's director of hospitality. "Her flowers create the kind of atmosphere that enriches our worship. They make our people eager to see what she has done each week."

She pays for all of her own flowers and supplies.

"If the church had to pay for arrangements like hers, it would cost us a fortune," said Olivia Haley, St. William's office manager.

McLanathan has also volunteered for years with the Mountain View-Los Altos Community Foundation Alpha Omega program, which provides shelter, food and a structured environment for the homeless who are working or seeking work. In recent years, when Alpha Omega clients are staying at St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Los Altos, she works every evening for a week, usually with her friend Mims Munro.

"I just have a lot of energy," McLanathan said to explain her life of service, but Burns sees it differently.

"She is a loving, dedicated woman you can't help but like and admire," he said.

That sounds like you, mom.

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