A Flower a Day...

My thoughtful Auntie Joyce sent me a virtual bouquet of flowers in a birthday card online. It is truly amazing what technology can do! I clicked on the single tulip and a plethora of colourful flowers bloomed right there in front of me. I immediately felt uplifted and special. Once the bouquet was complete, I was able to slide my mouse over each type of flower to get the meaning of each flower. Since I am new to the world of botany, I was surprised at what I found out. I thought to myself "do you mean to say that each of the 270,000 types of flowers has its own unique meaning? This is not something that I thought of until now. The only flower that I was certain of was the red rose; that represents passionate love. The only reason I know this is from my high school days when we would have rose-o-gram for Valentine's day. There were different colours to represent your feelings toward the recipient. It was a BIG deal if you received a red rose from someone. Upon further reading, I found that the language of flowers is sometimes called florigraphy, which was used in the Victorian-era as a means of communication in which flowers and floral arrangements were used to send coded messages to allow people to express feelings which otherwise could not be spoken. How sad that there was a time in history where a person couldn't verbally express how they felt. Gesh, I would certainly be in trouble. I found out that these meanings mean different things to different people. Nonetheless, flowers are infused with symbolism and meaning, whatever the meaning may be.

Here in Bulgaria, it is custom to bring flowers when it is your first visit to a person's home. It is also customary to bring these flowers in odd numbers. In Bulgaria, the only time one would send even number of flowers is for a funeral or in a time of sorrow.

Upon further research, I found out that in most cases each flower is surrounded by an illusive mysterious aura and magic mood which is passed to the recipient of the arrangement. This makes sense, since flowers are living. When I was reading through some of the meanings of the flowers I was manifesting my desire "to be" so many of these characteristics; patience, purity, courageous, respectful, loving, happiness, joyful, grace... and the list goes on. I would like to make a parallel to this when we talk about people. Like a beautiful bouquet sitting in your living room, when you surround yourself with people who have positive intentions, love, joy and happiness, you can't help but feel the contagion of positivity.

If interested, here is the link to my birthday card
http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=3033584445601&source=jl999

I am off to buy me a big bouquet of Angelica for inspiration! Until next time....

Yours,

Andie