The Language of Flowers.

   Whate delight, in some sweet spot
   Combining love with garden plot,
   At once to cultivate one’s flowers
   And one’s epistolary powers!
   Growing one’s own choice words and fancies
   In orange tubs, and beds of pansies;
   One’s sighs and passionate declarations
   In odorous rhetoric of carnations;
   Seeing how far one’s stocks will reach;
   Taking due care one’s flowers of speech
   To guard from blight as well as bathos,
   And watering, every day, one’s pathos!

                                            – Leigh Hunt (1857)

 

I am blessed in being married to the most amazing man in the whole universe.  I love him beyond any measure. 

Someone enquired, recently, about the large pancheon that sits on our living-room hearth and overflows with dried, flower heads. How had I acquired so many?

Every week, since the day we were engaged, my beloved  has brought me a single, red rose. For my  birthday, I receive   yellow roses – one for each year of life. Our anniversaries – not just wedding, but also engagement and first kiss - are similarly marked by vases of fragrant beauty, counting down the years. More flowers have been given for birthing children, being unwell, professional successes or  ’just because’.                                

He knows me well. He knows that, although the loud ,blousy, hot-house specimens are fun to have around  occasionally, what I really appreciate are the informal bunches of sunflowers, lavender and sweetpeas bought from the garden gate, the tiny, glass inkwell full of daisies and speedwell and the scented, lacy cream of Old Maid’s Nightcap, picked on an evening stroll. 

For a quarter of a century, the flowers have all, apart from one, been carefully preserved and added to this vast , eclectic pot- pourri.   

Valentine’s day usually brings a posy of snowdrops or honeysuckle, picked from the garden and placed in an antique cream pot that we bought from a junk shop in Chipping Norton. One year, he presented me with a rosemary wreath, twisted from the bush that I dry the jumpers on, the lacerations on his fingertips oozing with the love poured into his selfless task.

The Victorians used a language of flowers. Floriography dictated what every petal meant. The way the flowers were worn showed positive or negative reactions. Booklets were perused to assess the value of every tussie-mussie. Some of the glam, up-market florists are attempting to resurrect the tradition for a new generation. I’m told that to receive a pineapple in her Valentine bouquet is the highest accolade of affection that a girl could ever wish for.

I don’t hanker after pineapples.

I have no need to pontificate over every blossom that I am given. They all speak one very simple, straightforward and clear message.  They whisper, with the quiet fragrance of a pot – pourri garnered over many years and shared experiences,  that here is a man who loves me from the core of his being and displays that love in every breath and action that he takes.     

It is a love for which I am deeply thankful.