Showing posts with label flower symbolism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flower symbolism. Show all posts

Friday, September 8, 2023

Meaning of Flowers by J. S. Marlo

 


Seasoned Hearts
"Love & Sacrifice #1"
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I was having lunch with a friend, and I was telling her I needed to weed my flowerbeds. She asked what kind of flowers I grew. My answer: pretty flowers?

I know the names of some flowers, like roses, tulips, daffodil, poppies, petunias, lilies... but I don't really pay attention to their names. I choose my flowers according to colours, shapes, and scents. She proceeded to tell me flowers have meanings. I knew red roses meant love, but for the rest, I wasn't too sure, so I did some research... in case I decide to add those kind of details in a future story.


When deciphering the meaning of a flower, its colour is as important as the flower itself.

Red: Red flowers are the most popular to send to someone. They represent love, passion, and affection.

Pink: Pink flowers are sent to friends or love interest. They represent femininity and playfulness.

Yellow: Yellow flowers are sent to brighten a home or cheer up a friend. They represent joy, happiness, and friendship.

White: White flowers are sent to someone who's getting married or welcomed a baby. They represent purity, humility, and innocence.


Here are the flowers to send according to the occasion or the meaning you would like to convey.

Love: red roses, red tulips, red carnations, dahlias.

Friendship: yellow roses, freesias, alstroemeria, chrysanthemums.

Gratitude: pink roses, hydrangeas, sweet peas, irises.

Sympathy: white roses, lilies, orchids, poppies.

Celebration: peonies, lisianthuses, daffodils, calla lilies.


My two favorite are lavender and lilac. Both for their colours and their scents, but not their meanings.

Lavender means distrust and Lilac means joy of youth.

There are also birth flowers, like there are birthstones. I was born in September. According to the chart, my birth flower is Morning Glory. Well, that's interesting because I'm anything but glorious in the morning.

I'll go weed my flowerbeds one last time before the frost kills all my flowers. Take Care & Happy Reading!

J. S.

Sunday, July 14, 2019

The earth laughs in flowers (quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson) ...by Sheila Claydon



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I haven't had much time to write this year. Instead, sadly, I have been helping friends whose loved ones were very sick, and who have now passed away. It's been a time of sadness and several funerals but, as is always the way when someone dies, the tears have been intermingled with laughter as the good times are remembered. This was especially the case yesterday.

It was the first secular funeral I had attended so I didn't know what to expect. What I got was a day of joy. The music, which was special to the family and the deceased, was joyful, as were the very personal speeches. Nobody wore black. Instead the women were in bright dresses and the men relaxed and tieless, in shirtsleeves. The sun was warm, birds sang and it wasn't at all difficult to imagine the deceased nodding his approval, his wonderful smile wide as he saw all his family and friends together, laughing as they remembered.

And the lovely display of yellow and red family flowers, glowing like a pile of jewels on top of the coffin, made me think of the language of flowers. Red roses for passion,  red tulips for true love,  lilies and poppies for sympathy in death, pink roses and hydrangea for gratitude, iris for faith and hope, lily-of-the-valley for sweetness and purity, they carry so much symbolism. Cultures differ so much too. What might be right for one country can be wrong for another. And it's not just countries, it can even be local. In some places in the UK it is thought to be unlucky to bring bluebells into a house, whereas it is fine in other areas. Tree blossom is a no no too, as is giving anyone a single daffodil. They must always be given in bunches.  Flower lore is endless, as is the pleasure flowers bring.




My mother was a florist, so I grew up with flowers, and although by the time I was a teenager we lived in an apartment, the balcony was still full of flowers from spring through to winter, and her enthusiasm has not only rubbed off onto me, it increases with every year.  Nothing gives me more pleasure than walking around my own garden checking every new shoot, or deadheading blooms past their prime so that others can replace them. And I love the difference the seasons bring. In the early spring everything is either primrose yellow or white, then comes the blue and purple season followed by  shades of pink from the palest rose to the deepest cerise. Later the yellows return, but now mixed with orange and scarlet, then it's the evergreens and a tracery of bare branches as winter takes over...not for long though. In January the first snowdrops appear, as do the hellebores, better known as Christmas roses, and then the pink camellias start to bud.

















Loving flowers as I do is one of the reasons I wrote Bouquet of Thorns. To me, it was like going back in time to when my mother was alive and I sometimes used to help her when she had to build displays or decorate an hotel. One of my fondest and most exciting memories is helping carry boxes and pots of flowers aboard the  ocean liners that used to dock in the port city of Southampton where I was born. It was long before the days of the modern cruise ship and ocean voyages took weeks instead of days. It  was a real event for many travellers and those with wealthy friends were sent off with huge bouquets. Once my job was done I was sent down to the galley where chefs would pile a plate high with food,  and then later sent me home with boxes of chocolates or a special desert which I had to sneak out.

Now, so many years older, I have been a passenger on cruise liners to many parts of the world, but none of them, however grand, have had that old fashioned elegance and grandeur of the ships of my distant past. Happy memories, whether they are of people or of events are so precious, and if they are garlanded with the memory of flowers, then they are even more so.






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