The twenty-first of December is the official onset of winter, but chilly temperatures have already descended on Birthday Blossoms Headquarters in New York City. This dip in the mercury magically inspires thoughts of snowflakes, hot cocoa, gingerbread, ice skating, and fluffy blankets. What it does not bring to mind is flowers. Except here at Birthday Blossoms, of course, where flowers are always foremost in our minds, even on the coldest, darkest day of the year. Blossoms popular in wintertime are poinsettia, paper whites, and other flowers typically grown in greenhouses. A perfect example is December’s birth month flower, the lovely narcissus.
Flowers such as the narcissus can bring warmth to a chilly room and brightness on a grey, wintry day, two of the many things we appreciate about flowers in winter. Maybe try a few blossoms on your desk at work or a potted plant in your kitchen to help get you through a long winter day. Or perhaps these beautiful words from eighteenth century English poet William Cowper will warm you with thoughts of spring.
“Flowers in Winter”
From The Task, Book 6, Winter Walk at Noon
Th’ icy touch
Of unprolific winter has impress’d
A cold stagnation on th’ intestine tide.
But let the months go round, a few short months,
And all shall be restored. These naked shoots,
Barren as lances, among which the wind
Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes,
Shall put their graceful foliage on again,
And more aspiring, and with ampler spread,
Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost.
Then each, in its peculiar honours clad,
Shall publish, even to the distant eye,
Its family and tribe. Laburnum, rich
In streaming gold, syringe, iv’ry pure;
The scented and the scentless rose; this red,
And of an humbler growth, the other tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom
Of neighb’ring cypress, or more sable yew,
Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf
That the wind severs from the broken wave;
The lilac, various in array, now white,
Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set
With purple spikes pyramidal, as if
Studious of ornament, yet unresolved
Which hue she most approved, she chose them all;
Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan
But well compensating her sickly looks
With never-cloying odours, early and late;
Hypericum all bloom so thick a swarm
Of flow’rs, like flies clothing her slender rods,
That scarce a leaf appears, mezerion too,
Tough leafless, well attir’d, and thick beset
With blushing wreaths, investing ev’ry spray;
Althaea the purple eye; the broom,
Yellow and brighter, as bullion unalloyed,
Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,
The deep dark green of whose unvarnish’d leaf
Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more
The bright profusion of her scatter’d stars. –
These have been, and these shall be in their day;
And all this uniform, uncolour’d scene
Shall be dismantled of its fleecy load
And flush into variety again.
William Cowper
(1731-1800)
If this doesn’t work, try “It Will Be Summer – Eventually” by Emily Dickinson. Stay warm and we look forward to seeing you in the new year.