It was the middle of a cool San Francisco night with the ocean breeze settling in. The visitors have left, but the sculptures stay. “It’s time for the stake out” whispers Jo, “nobody is stealing our hydrangeas!”. A few weeks had passed as the community disparagingly looked on as their precious pearly hydrangeas, the million-flower as my Mom remembers its name in the Philippines, disappeared each night at the hands of unknown botanical assailants. A black market for hydrangeas had emerged in the San Francisco Flower Market. But how could they catch the perpetrators in the act? Jo spearheaded the neighbors to uphold justice for the flowers and planned a stakeout from dusk till dawn, the late hours of the night when no human soul would or "should" be about in the park. Each neighbor hid behind a different totem, behind those following eyes that keep watch over the park every day and every night. It’s a curious thing: as if the totems were caricatures of the community itself or even the other way around, the neighborhood had begun to inhabit the sculptures. The hours dragged on with no one in sight, just the humming of the crickets and the hushed pulse of cars on the freeway behind the barrier wall. The neighbors called it quits for now, but were determined to protect the hydrangeas at all costs.
Eventually, the police became involved and ironically proposed a much less confrontational method, a playful plan that could have come straight from Mystery Inc.—fluorescence. The hydrangeas were painted with a fluorescent ink, i.e. highlighter ink; they figured they could track the flowers at their destination, the SF Flower Market. In what looked like a murder investigation, the cops scanned the hydrangea stalls of the flower market determining which specimens carried the glowing strokes of paint. Yes, the culprits were caught and the hydrangeas were saved, the sculptures breathed a sigh of relief. But this wouldn’t be the flower’s last encounter with trouble. (Full essay coming soon)
