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05/23/18


LETICIA
Leticia DePaula, Lenita By Grita
Leticia DePaula is the daughter of Lenita and sister to Nemuel and Kemuel. She’s helped our truck in so many ways from cleaning stems to scrubbing the truck to Interacting with customer. She’s supported the project financially in various levels and is responsible for Lenita’s pink paint job. Leticia is also an emotional support reminding that specially on bad days we need to ‘Stop And Smell The Flores’ and to not overthink an Instagram caption

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Leticia DePaula
Business owner / Mandeville, Louisiana
Fun fact:
Loves fireplaces, rainy days and pockets


Lenita is also your mother; is it weird seeing her name on a truck, stickers, etc.?

It’s not weird seeing her name but my brother made a postcard with a photo of her at 19 and I thought it was a bit weird that strangers would be sending a photo of our young mom all over the globe. But I am over it! It's ART.


Do you have an early memory of Nemuel’s obsession with flowers?

YES! We grew up in a very small village-like setting in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Some think that its wealth comes from mining but I say it’s the people and the cheese! Any occasion was an excuse for a community party. Weddings in the rural areas were the best, as was the coronation ceremony in the local Catholic church. Our mother used to make the floral arrangements for the girls and there were flowers, ferns, tiaras - all the works - and because there were no flower shops or supermarkets, most of the flowers were from people’s gardens or wild flowers from the fields. Nemuel was always the assistant!

I just wanted to play outside but he was right next to my mom handing her flowers and putting flowers together that he thought would complement each other. Sometimes I wondered what was going through his mind; what did he see in those flowers that made him smile from inside out? Even the flowers that didn’t make it into an arrangement would be used for something he would create later. He saw beauty and use for even the scraps.  I also remember when he stole a rose button from a neighbor's garden. She had been waiting for months to find out what color the roses were. One day, I am not sure if he was playing at her house or if he was just walking by, but he saw the rose button and could not help himself - he clipped it and brought it (along with a big smile) to my mom. It melted her heart and he was even happier that he could go stare at it whenever he pleased. Well long story short, the neighbor Roni came for a visit at our home and she was telling my mom how upset she was that someone had snatched her rose button, and then... she saw it. Suffice to say, my mom was embarrassed.

I also just want to mention how creative and artistic Nemuel was when it came to making dolls out of baby corn cobs. I mean, the dolls had haircuts, dresses, facial expressions and sometimes they even expressed emotions. Haha!


You’re in the granite industry and recently started a company called Bluejay Stones. If you could pick a stone for LENITA, what would it be?

It would be Nero Maquina Marble, I think that any of LENITA’s blooms would pop around Nero Maquina.


Visiting national parks is something you enjoy doing. What park would you recommend as a must-see?

I truly think that every national park I have visited is a must see but if I can mention just one it will be Death Valley National Park. I just never expected to see so much beauty in a place that has Death Valley for a name. It has sand dunes, salt flats, wildflowers, awesome rocks and colorful mountains.
I definitely cannot pick a favorite one because I have yet to visit all of them but I am so grateful for our national parks and for all of those who worked and still work to ensure the parks are up and running.


Open ended: Leave Lenita a poem, a song, a few sentences, a though.

“Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it and choose to persevere.”
- Barack Obama

Flores of LENITA ︎
Bluejay’s Instagram ︎



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