Flowers Tell a Story

Flowers tell a story and before you make that purchase, do you know your loved one’s favorite flower or the one that brings back bad memories?

My favorite flower is the orange tiger lily that grows wild along the ditch banks. It reminds me of summer, running barefoot and free. It represents home, eastern North Carolina where the land and water meet the sky. It reminds me of my sons when they were young, trekking through the woods and bringing home their treasures, memories along with a few bumps and scars.

If you give someone flowers, it should mean something or at least tell a story. It’s too easy to choose what the flower shop suggests, or simply pick a bunch of roses. Though there is nothing wrong with sending roses. I love them, but red roses for Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day, how cliché. What effort have you put into this purchase? What choice did you make? Did you think of their favorite color or the smell of their perfume? Perhaps they wore a yellow blouse that reminded you of this bloom. Are their eyes as blue as forget-me-nots or their lips as pink as peonies? Does the bloom of an orchid seem erotic or does the tulips remind you of a kiss?

I have sent flowers for many occasions. Too many times I have chosen flowers for a funeral, or sent flowers to a sick friend, I’ve helped choose flowers for weddings, proms, and given them just because, each bloom was special, each choice decided with love, because each flower tells a story and not every one’s the same.

Do your flowers tell a story or are they just an easy fix? Have you ever asked your mother, your lover or friend what flowers remind them of you or you of them?

I remember hot summer nights, the smell of night blooming jasmine perfuming the air, heavy with dew, the scent of fresh mown grass and the lingering scent of sunshine still baked in the asphalt, the smell of the summers of my youth. I can still smell the sweet scent of a summer rain cleaning the air, and honeysuckles sweet nectar attracting more than hummingbirds and bees as we tried to taste the drops of honey in the flower’s cone. Barefoot, suntanned, and fancy free, the soft sound of the Eagles, Boston or Journey on the radio.

If you bring me jasmine or honeysuckle we can share a memory.

They say scent is our greatest link to memory. Perhaps that is true, because I can’t smell these things without thinking of you, summers spent in South Creek. Today I would send you a memory, a basket of honeysuckle.

Magnolia blossoms, and nights spent around a bonfire savoring the rich smell of earth, wood and smoke, the changes in the air like the years slipping by.

The wisteria that grows with wild abandon wrapping itself around anything that doesn’t move and blooming with intense passion though only briefly. Every spring I look forward to seeing the forest and old houses and barns covered with purple blossoms. Some of the flowers are so pale they have no color at all, and others are a deep purple signaling for all to see, look at me, look at me. The sweet scent is almost toxic in its intensity. The aroma overpowering the unsuspecting, but her beauty is short lived. Too soon the flowers wither and die leaving nothing but the clinging symbiotic vine. If left unchecked, the vine will cover everything. Is her great beauty and sweet, cloying perfume worth her invasion? Is there more to her story, perhaps there is a parable waiting to be told through the vine of the wisteria, or she might just be what she appears, a great and fragile beauty, too soon lost leaving only her memory and the promise of summer.

To every season there is a flower from the evergreens of winter with the hearty mums and hot house cacti to the brilliant abundance of spring. When I think of winter’s cold and dreary, brightened by hot house flowers and a few hearty species like my knockout roses that grow all year long. Flowers are the little smiles of hope that spring will soon be here.

The first buds of the ornamental pear tree and the lifting of the daffodil’s head, mark the beginning of spring and all things green and growing. Tulips and peonies in rows on Terecia flower farms where my mother-in-law worked as a young girl, picking flowers, to southern yards coming to life with snowball bushes and azaleas.

When buying mom flowers this Mother’s Day have you considered her story?

My favorite flower is the tiger lily, it grows wild in the ditch banks and in the woods. It is untamed yet it returns every year to smile at the sun and remember…