Every year when spring rolls around, I think of Bobb Wirfel, a floral designer and beloved friend. Although Wirfel's deceased, I see him in almost everything blooming, especially in trees.

Bobb and I would be driving somewhere and he’d point out, “There’s no kind of green like the spring green that pops out in these trees … and you know you won’t see this color green for a whole other year.”

Bobb — Mr. B to some — had a language that was perfectly suited for a shy man with a crooked smile. It was the language of flowers. “When it comes to flowers,” he said, “anything worth doing is worth OVER doing.”

Coffee cans choked with garden roses, magnolia blossoms in bowls. Bobb could take a miniature azalea and make it look like pink cotton petticoats oozing out of a basket. His heart showed through his handiwork and this is how he spoke.

I first met Bobb at In Bloom, shuffling across the floor in red leather boots and faded jeans (falling off his hips) and a Lucky Strike cigarette that seemed permanently attached to his upper lip. Bobb, along with his sidekick, Scott McCool, brought floral design to a new and different level.

Their combination of extraordinary talents — which in the music world might be called rock n’ roll and classical — produced some out of this world stuff but just as unique to me was their camaraderie and understanding of one another that seemed alive and in bloom up to the day that Bobb died almost three years ago.

Bobb could make beautiful bows blindfolded. Weave a bridal bouquet with as much ease as shelling peas. Dress a Christmas wreath with only ribbon and make it pop.

One Easter he suggested that rather than putting a flower arrangement on our Welch cupboard, “Why don’t you just line up some brown hen eggs all in a row?” he said. It was an idea that was vintage Mr. B — and another one of many that everyone enjoyed that Easter and many thereafter.

At the same time, he saw beauty in bare corners and blank walls. He’d putter in his back yard moving a pot one inch over and feel like the world was righted. “No one will ever see that I moved that” he’d say, “but it’s important to me.”

He could create an elegant arrangement with a touch of whimsy. Plop jelly jars down on a tabletop and make it look like old crystal. When it came to beauty, Bobb was bold and everything he touched seemed to have that rare quality that I call, Flare.

He reminded me that old world manners will never go out of style. Neither will Mr. B. He still lives I think, especially at springtime — in our yards, on our patios, at our dining room tables and in our kitchen. Wherever there are flowers and the pleasure of making something prettier than it was before, it's a Mr. B setting.

On one occasion Bobb sent me an arrangement with a note still pinned on my bulletin board :“The last of the breed — wear it fearlessly.”

Truth is, Bobb was the last of the breed and he did indeed wear it fearlessly.

He saw wonder in how individual flowers could be brought together to form something even more beautiful. As he neared death, Mr. B saw this same beauty in how his friends and family came together — to love him. All us gathered in Bobb’s vase. He loved seeing this. It was Bobb’s final arrangement and, I believe, his finest.

It allowed him to leave with love, peace and a sense of satisfaction, saying sweetly with that crooked smile, “Practically perfect.”