Feeling Blessed Midst Valentine Bouquets
The rooms in our house are overflowing with flowers – roses, tulips, camellias, roses, cyclamen, a spring bouquet, more roses! Every single room! They were Valentine gifts from friends and from my beloved, as well. I feel surrounded by cheerfulness and good wishes and promises of springtime and happiness.
I can’t help thinking that should I shuffle off this mortal coil without anyone noticing, it would be all right. A rather morbid thought, to be sure, but it’s one I learned from my sainted mother. More than once I heard her say at a funeral or memorial service, “All these flowers – wasted! Bring me flowers while I’m living!” And we did. Yellow roses were her favorite.
I’m glad to say that flowers have arrived in abundance during my own lifetime and I have enjoyed every blossom… “as god intended” my friend Te would say. Nyel has spoiled me on many an occasion with long-stemmed red roses and I never cease to be amazed at the generosity of friends who arrive with elaborate bouquets on all sorts of occasions – as well as on non-occasions and just-because.
There have been tomes written about the meaning of flowers – Daisies: innocence and hope; Roses: love and desire; Yellow Tulips: cheerful thoughts. Even the sorts of arrangements have meaning, from nosegays to bridal bouquets. Speaking of nosegays, did you know that during the Victorian era a small one, a “tussie mussie,” might include chamomile flowers, which a woman might send to a romantic interest to tell him “Patience” whereas goldenrod represented indecision. And I was interested to learn that the oldest evidence of formal arranging of bouquets in vases comes from ancient Egypt, and depictions of flower arrangements date to the Old Kingdom (~2500 BCE).
In this stress-filled world of today, I’m so glad that the tradition of flower-giving continues unabated! Walking through a house filled with flowers goes a long way toward re-balancing my thoughts and putting my own corner of the world in perspective. You just can’t be surrounded by flowers and not feel blessed!
How beautiful Sydney! I absolutely love flowers also and they do make me feel happy. Instead of flowers we have 3 huge bouquets of beautiful pussy willows in our house which I love too. They are our first sign of spring I always say. When we had our place in Oysterville we used to go scouting for them on the peninsula. I would have one big bouquet for our Oysterville table and one for our Olympia table.