She is the owner of Kane’s Florist (her grandmother’s name) on Stoneybatter Street. The family shop, dating back nearly a century, has served the neighbourhood faithfully on its most special occasions; Christmas, Easter, Birthdays, Weddings and Funerals. Flowers and fruit have cheered up the homes of Stoneybatter for generations and in this she takes obvious pride. She still lives above the shop in handsomely furnished quarters and intends to live out the rest of her life there.
Extract from the book ‘Stoneybatter’ by Kearns 1997

‘The shop goes back to 1897. I was born in 1918 and my father was born here. It was the family business. My grandmother’s name was Kilmartin, but when my grandfather died she married again and her name was Kane. She was one of the characters of the neighbourhood—interesting and funny and amusing. She was a very big woman weighing twenty stone, but only five foot two. You can imagine how big she was. Even the children when they were in school and doing needlework and they’d make something that was big they’d say, “That would fit Mrs Kane!”

‘When I left school I came into the shop straight away. Back then we had two shops, this and the one next door there. This was the fruit shop and when my grandmother was alive the other shop was a vegetable shop. But we sold a few flowers at Christmas and things like that in the fruit shop. Then when I came in I started with the flowers. From the time I was a child I used to love flowers. The fruit became more important than the vegetables and we gave those up. Then the flowers became more important than the fruit.

‘There’s always been competition. I’ve seen some shops change hands ten or twelve times. We’ve survived because we’re here so long and we’re so well known. I never got a lesson on flowers in my life. I went to London and bought all the flower books and from there I found my way of doing things. During the War years we had flowers, but no fruit. It was difficult because we had a big family here, four brothers and two sisters, so times were bad during the War years.

‘About half our business is for special occasions. We always do a lot of work for Christmas and Valentine’s Day and, of course, Mother’s Day. It used to be that there was no such thing. Before that, it was mostly Christmas and Easter and Church holidays. And now we do quite a number of weddings. The whole style of weddings has changed. They’re all big weddings now. Years ago they used to be ordinary weddings. You’d get married in the morning and go off on your honeymoon by boat to England and there would only be corsages. Today there’s brides’ bouquets and bridesmaids’ bouquets plus church flowers.

‘At funerals they use more small flowers than they did. They’d be put in the church and taken to the cemetery…. and round wreaths and crosses. The artificial wreaths on grave sites, what we call shades, now thirty or forty years ago they were china flowers and they were expensive. I haven’t seen anything like that for years. We sell a lot of plastic ones now. Some people always want something special that will keep. But some of the older people would only want fresh flowers. Some wouldn’t touch artificial flowers. If anybody put artificial flowers on me I think I’d get up and go away!

‘Men are buying more flowers for their women today. Thirty years ago a man wouldn’t carry a bunch of flowers. You’d have to wrap them up to look like a sweeping brush or something like that, cover them completely. They were just embarrassed to be seen carrying flowers. The Irish men are very bad that way. They’d actually say to me “Would you cover them up? I don’t want anyone to see me carrying flowers”. But now on Mother’s Day you have all the young boys coming in for flowers for their Mother and Valentine’s Day they’re all in for roses for their girlfriends. Today I have some men who come in and arrange their own flowers and they’re twice as fussy as women.’