On her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary Simi Gold’s husband wanted to take her out to dinner. But business was so hectic in her flower store there was no way she could get away. “Well you never promised me our life together would be a bed of roses ” she teased “but look — I ended up surrounded by them!”

The flower business you might say grew on her. Unlike most women who think about flowers when planning their weddings and then move on Simi Gold’s wedding not only included flowers but led straight into a life filled with them. “My mother-in-law finally opened her own flower shop in Williamsburg in 1967 and after I got married in 1969 I starting helping her out ” she explains. “In the beginning I was just looking for something to do. But little by little I learned the business and finally opened my own branch in Monsey in 1979.

 “I always liked flowers” she avows. “When you bring flowers into a house it changes the whole atmosphere. Hashem made them for us as a gift to give us fragrance and beauty.”

She considers it a certain zchus to have had the opportunity to spend a life among blossoms a sentiment that was reinforced some years back while she was working on a wedding at the Marina del Ray hall for the Book family of Monsey. Rabbi Book z”l entered the hall to find her lying on the floor finishing the bottom of the chuppah. “He saw that I was very tired ” she says “and so to lift my spirits he quoted me a gemara. I don’t remember how it goes exactly but it says a person can end up being a leather maker or a perfume maker but the perfume maker has the greater zchus! I never forgot it.”

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