Floriography, by Gina Margolies — flowers

June’s Birthday Blossom is the beautiful rose.  So much has been said of the rose. Poets have sung its glories, painters have displayed its beauty, and Cupid has single-handedly made it the most popular flower in the world. The star of the show on Valentine’s Day and at weddings, a popular addition on cakes, and a common motif on consumer goods, it does not seem an exaggeration to say there are roses everywhere. In the Western world of today, the rose represents love. Given as a gift or populating a bridal bouquet, roses prompt us to matters of the heart....

Welcome Spring (finally)  Spring has, finally, sprung here at Birthday Blossoms HQ. After an unusually cold and snowy winter which outstayed its welcome, New York City has greeted warmer temperatures with open arms. The annual explosion of flowers and greenery in the parks that dot the cityscape, the trees that line the streets, and the flower boxes that adorn brownstone windows has commenced.  In honor of the long-awaited spring weather, I did what I do every spring. I pulled up an image of Primavera, the painting by Sandro Botticelli, on my computer screen at work. (The real thing resides at the...

Hello October Birthday Blossoms and Happy Autumn!   Welcome to the latest edition of Fun Flower Facts, where whimsy meets who, what, where, when, and why. In this edition, we will be introduced to Mr. Luther Burbank. Luther Burbank was an American botanist, horticulturist, and agricultural scientist. Burbank grew up on a farm and had a high school education. He taught himself botany and agriculture. Burbank developed over 800 strains and varieties of plants. You might be familiar with some of the flowers he cultivated, such as the Shasta Daisy.  The Russet & Burbank potato, often called the Idaho potato, is...

With the official first day of autumn seven days away, here at Birthday Blossoms HQ we are enjoying the golden season. The dog days of summer have melted into warm afternoons and barely cool evenings. It is the late summer into early fall golden time of year. And speaking of golden, this time of year brings to the forefront something golden that Birthday Blossoms loves, namely the Golden Proportion, close cousin of our beloved Fibonacci sequence.   Regular readers of Floriography know all about the Fibonacci sequence, a series of numbers in which each number is the sum of the two...

Sometimes, you just have to be patient.    Those who love a warm, sunny spring have not had an easy task this year. Here at Birthday Blossoms HQ, we have had a rainy, chilly, very dreary spring thus far. The temperature has been hanging in the 50s, it has rained more days than not every week, and the sun has been in a stingy mood. It feels like we have been waiting for spring forever. Rather than complain about the weather, we decided to plant a balcony garden. While we don’t love non-stop rain, the garden does. And the reward for...