Our World Day

What do flowers mean to you?

Do you appreciate receiving them for holidays or events like Valentine's Day, weddings or graduations?

Do you know each type's symbolism or ignore that aspect and simply select ones that are prettiest or best-liked?

I have a basic understanding of flowers. Roses are more geared toward love and devotion. Carnations typically say "Get well soon." Tulips have a tendency to signify spring. Red goes to a love. Yellow goes to a friend. Bulbs go to your mother on Mother's Day so she has something cheerful that will come back each season after only one instance of straining her back in the garden planting them. Simple stuff like that.

I've never been the girl who likes getting flowers. Call me overly-practical or whatever, but why would you buy something for someone you care about when it's just going to die? Why waste the money to send such a drab message?

Also, most types you buy don't have the stereotypical smell one expects when thinking of flowers. They very rarely have any scent at all, unless you pay an arm and a leg and then I'm not positive the florist doesn't spray the doomed blossoms with artificial odors. The cross-bred yellow, lavender and red roses lining my driveway might not last as long and might not bloom with the same breath-taking grace, but they smell so much better.

I have given a number of flowers:

A half coconut full of fragrant Hawaiian blossoms left on the table in our hotel room one morning for my mother to wake up to. They were gone when my father and I returned. I had spent the better part of an hour collecting the best-looking blooms that had already fallen off their bushes.

A bag of assorted lily bulbs specially ordered from a catalog went to my mother but she never bothered to plant them. Last I saw them was in the garage on the "junk workbench," still in their red mesh bag.

And of course, I've received my fair share of bouquets.

The dentist's office always has a bucket of carnations, dyed to be appropriate to the nearest holiday, and you're always encouraged to take at least three home with you, because the number "looks better" in a vase. They last until the cats find and eat them.

For one of my six-month anniversaries, my then-boyfriend showed up on my doorstep with not a single, not a dozen, but 14 perfectly crimson roses. They sat on the kitchen table for a week or two before they realized they had perished and were thrown out.

Three corsages, all white roses, sit in their plastic boxes in the back of the refrigerator, wrinkled and desolate. They were from a junior prom and two senior proms during high school--all pomp and circumstance instantly forgotten out of context.

I received a single, long-stem red rose and a Hawaiian-style lei of purple and white flowers from my then-boyfriend for my high school graduation. Both were forsaken within days.

Hosting such little respect for flowers, my appreciation for the colors of the coming spring always baffles me. Pansies and daffodils have sprung forth all over campus. The scent of the bushes bearing purple flowers surrounding McCormick sneaks up on me in the middle of the night. Plum blossoms will soon rain pink on the walkways leading to the north entrance of Marsh Hall. I have an urge to claim one of the bright yellow daffodils as my own.

So I do.

Walking back from my morning class, I spotted a daffodil that must either have been kicked over or collapsed under its own weight. It was still relatively intact, so I plucked it and continued on my way, figuring if it was going to die anyway, it might as well be where I could see it. There were only two bugs on it; I gently brushed them off outside before placing it in an empty tea bottle in the Index Office. I instantly decided I didn't like it as much.

Why? There are a number of possibilities.

The overall feel of the office is warm; the cabinets are a light tan, the walls are creamy beige, our innumerable sticky notes are a muted yellow and there are a number of personal articles in the room that are rather shocking shades of yellow: a cupcake, a poster, a notebook, a bag, a box, a jacket, a handful of No. 2 pencils. The poor daffodil can't compete with artificial colors. It just plain looks better, more cheerful, more inspirational outside, where yellow is not a common color. It brightens the landscape and screams the arrival of spring.

The "game" is over. I have won. I've gotten the end prize and now it's no fun any more. The flowers outside pose more of a challenge because I do not own them.

I rather think it's a little of both, though leaning more towards the former.

My poor daffodil will sit in its tea bottle vase until it wilts and then off to the landfill it will go, hopefully to become fertilizer for future generations of spring flowers, none of which I hope will end up in a vase.