A behind the scenes look the construction of floats for the annual Rose Parade

It's winter in Southern California, which means cooler temperatures and a fair amount of rain. I love all seasons in Southern California. This one is fun because our backyard citrus and avocados are ripe and the garden is full of lush greens. Dozens of varieties of lettuce, rows of spinach, rocket, kale, chard, English peas, snow peas, herbs, onions and potatoes. Roses and bougainvillea are in full bloom, and add bright punches of color throughout our yard. It becomes clear why Pasadena residents started this tradition more than 100 years ago - to tell the world about our lovely winters!

The latest round of showers surprisingly capped the short mountains above our home with snow. This created a festive scene on our way to Fiesta Parade Floats, where my son and I were registered as volunteers to decorate the Kaiser Permanente float for the 2020 Rose Parade.

Kaiser Permanente holds an annual lottery for employees and physicians to register themselves and one guest to volunteer in one of several 8-hour shifts over the course of three days. Volunteers park at nearby lot and are shuttled to a large warehouse owned and operated by professional parade float builders. Inside the warehouse, there many people hard at work with many different floats (you can view the full line up here.). The air is filled with sounds from power tools and it's not uncommon to see sparks fly from someone using an angle grinder or welder. Each float is surrounded by scaffolding and a team of professionals and volunteers.

The 2020 Kaiser Permanente float is titled "Courage to Reimagine" and features a Wizard of Oz theme. It showcases the KP vision and commitment to creating a joyful and healthy world, and to making a lasting impact on the health of individuals and communities everywhere. It also embodies the 2020 Tournament of Roses parade theme, "The Power of Hope," which celebrates the influence of optimism and hope.

The core construction of a float happens weeks or even months in advance, but the final decorations kick into gear about a week before the parade because all surfaces of the float must be covered in natural materials that are free from artificial materials or dyes. This includes many perishable flowers, but a wide variety of seeds, dried flowers, and other organic, natural material.

One corner of the warehouse is the distribution point for the natural materials affixed to the floats. Workers and volunteers line up to grab a bag of strawflower petals or dried lentils. As you pass floats, you might catch the scent of dried dill or mint.

There's another distribution point for pints of glue and paint brushes.

We began our volunteer shift by each receiving a cup of bright yellow, dried flower petals. Our task was to use scissors to chop the contents of the cup into much smaller, uniform pieces. Not a powder, but more of a uniform confetti.

These particular flowers were used to decorate a hot air balloon on the float.

Next, we cut small rectangles from dried and pressed corn husks to be used as shingles on float structures before we joined a small group working to cover metal signs in thousands of tiny, black onion seeds.

Our final task was to cover the walls of a structure with chopped straw flowers. A generous layer of glue was painted on before a small sponge was used to apply the flowers.

We took a few minutes to look around at the other floats before leaving the facility. You can see the amount of detail that goes into creation of so many of the float elements!

This was our second time to volunteer for float decorating, and I hope it won't be our last. Perhaps this can be a new Clements family tradition. Here are two photos from our volunteer shift in 2016!