Hot Pursuit

Though the ups and downs of the weather make us wonder at times, there is a definite sign that spring is in full bloom at Frank & Tom’s Greenhouse in Blooming Prairie.
For the 25th season, owner Frank Vorlicek is once again dazzling the area with a wide assortment of fresh flowers waiting for green thumbs to latch onto them. He has a mixture of perennials and annuals flowers as well as vegetable plants.
Vorlicek nearly got blasted right out of business two years ago when a record-breaking 18-inch snowfall in early May caused the roof to collapse on all of his flowers just a day before he was set to open. He had just loaded the greenhouse with about $6,000 of fresh flowers at the time the storm hit. 
He didn’t know at the time if he would bounce back. But that spring he set up what he was able to salvage outside the wreckage and continued on as if nothing happened. 
Asked what it was like to experience Mother Nature’s wrath, Vorlicek replied: “Oh my God if you have the roof fall in on you. The day it went down, it was a bitch. Then I got to the point where I laughed about it. It was so dismal I had to laugh about it.”
But with a little perseverance and hard work mixed in, the retired Blooming Prairie schoolteacher is back just as strong as ever with his flower business. 
With the help of the property owner, Kyle Johnson, Vorlicek stayed almost in the same spot where residents have been accustomed to finding spring beauties for their yards. Johnson constructed a 90-foot outdoor greenhouse with metal poles. 
“He has bent over backwards for us,” Vorlicek said of Johnson.  
Vorlicek says he has enjoyed flowers for his entire life. He began developing a special interest in flowers from his grandmother while growing up as a youngster near Silver Lake, Minn. “I was close to my grandmother and she shared flowers with me,” he said. “All of her extra money, which wasn’t much, went to flowers,” he added.
“I love the beauty and playing with the dirt,” he said. “They just fascinate me.”
As Vorlicek approaches the 70-year mark, he still thinks he has a few years left in him to continue pedaling flowers. “It becomes such a part of me,” he said in between helping customers one day last week. “When I stop liking people and liking flowers, I’ll quit.”
After he thought about it a little more, Vorlicek said he’d probably keep going until he dies. “It’s work, but it’s interesting and fun,” he added. 
Frank & Tom’s will be open daily until the end of June. The hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 12 to 6 p.m. on Sundays. 
If you’re looking for something to bring a little extra bloom into your life, I’d suggest you go in hot pursuit of getting down to Frank & Tom’s before everything gets picked over.