Unjumbling ( what a great word!) the flowers
When my mum was in one of her former homes a truly stupendous huge bouquet arrived for her, but we couldn't work out who the senders, ' Bill and Mary' were. My mum was absolutely thrilled, tearful and deeply moved but I began to smell a rat. I made a few enquiries and found that there was another resident in the home who shared the same first name as my mum with friends named Bill and Mary. The flowers were meant for her, not my mum.
This is going to sound awful but I couldn't see what to do except when my mum was down at supper, I nipped into her room grabbed the flowers from out of the vase and ran round to the other woman's room to deliver them. Thanks to my mum's dementia, by the time she got back from supper, she had forgotten that the flowers had ever been delivered.
Oh Goodness, now I realise I should have left the flowers with my mum and pretended they hadn't been for the other person? I do buy my mum flowers regularly but that bouquet must have broken someone's bank account.
Now she is in the NH, and spends most of her time in her room so it's a question of finding small pot plants and fresh flowers when I can remember. This is awful to say too, but there is one carer with a watering mania, I keep finding an African Violet standing waist deep in water and gradually rotting away. I don't know who the carer is so I have mentioned it as diplomatically as I can, however now the other plants are drowning! I feel so mean complaining about the watering, but it's driving me mad!
Yesterday I took a bowl of hyacinths over to my mum's chair so that she could smell the fragrance. I hadn't realised they too were standing in a saucer of water which dropped over my mother as I held it closer to her, causing her to squeal and pull faces. No wonder she thinks I'm awful!
Karen, Jennifer's point about enthusiasms waning is sadly all too true. My mum was an avid gardener in her younger days too, but she seemed to lose all interest once she was in formal care, even though there were opportunities for her to have her own 'patch'. Still, might be good to keep trying as long as you think she is getting something out of it and as long as you are able to keep up the effort too.