I Love Ginger Blog

11/13/2005

The Gourmet Lady store in Yachats has been open about 18 months now.  The website was up first www.gourmetlady.com and then came this ginger website.  Putting the store together was lots of hard work and fun too.  I enjoyed working with a number of tradespeople to get the store open on time. 

Early on, I asked George for help.  I bought a lot of shelves and tables at garage sales, and took them to George's house.  He has spray-paint equipment, and was soon spray painting and doing tai-chi at the same time.  This is an artistic and creative man, and one who clearly did not want a lot of direction for this task.  I dumped large quantities of furniture, and cans of paint in his yard and would just leave.  I never knew what to expect.  I ended up with a store full of pink, yellow, green, blue, and purple furniture.  Bright happy colors that make it feel like spring. 

George did beautiful work but did not ever enjoy things like figuring out how much time he spent working, he didn't like writing invoices, he didn't like asking for money.  Knowing that he likes ginger, one day I gave him a box of ginger honey crystals (by Prince of Peace).  After he tried them, he was consistent in asking directly for this, which he used to make ginger tea.  Later when I opened the wine store, www.thewineplace.biz, George got busy building custom made shelves for this shop.  The shelving is beautiful, unique, and frequently admired by customers. 

Now it is sad to me that George has moved to Arizona.  He came in the shop to bid me a very unceremonious good bye.  Had I known his departure was so soon, I would have thrown him a big party.  But instead we had a quick conversation, he had too much to do, was anxious to get going.  We hugged goodbye, and I gave him a box of ginger honey crystals.  I hope he has made it to Bisbee, Arizona safely, and that he will think of me while enjoying a nice cup of ginger tea.