Lily of the Valley is for Happiness

This Thursday Mom and myself went up to Byron Center to a program in their library called Lily of the Valley is for Happiness. It was about the Victorian language of flowers and was quite fascinating! You can learn more about Wendy, the lady who gave the talk here.

Young Victorians, especially girls, studied entire books on the subject. They would carefully pick apart (maybe even literally!) bouquets from their friends and lovers to find the hidden meaning.

One of my favorite stories she told was of the Titantic. As it was customary for friends to send a bouquet of flowers on your departure, (most likely sweet peas, meaning departure) the ship became overloaded with flowers. They ran out of vases to put the flowers in, so they had to dump the excess overboard. I wish I could have seen that! Anyways, here are some common flowers and their meanings.

Most meanings were positive:

Baby's Breath - innocence, purity of heart

Dandelion - happiness

White lilac - youthful innocence

Phlox - proposal of love, sweet dreams

But some were bad:

Lavender - distrust

Geranium - stupidity

Marigold - cruelty, grief, jealousy

Tansy - I declare war against you!

I also thought it was interesting how different colors of the same flower changed the meaning. (See the example with roses below.)

Red rose - love

Generally, a red flower means love or passion, a white flower means innocence or purity, and yellow flowers are not usually good.

There was also meanings in how many flowers you received and how they were positioned, but I won't go into that.

pink rose - grace, beauty

Yellow rose - jealousy

Dried white rose - death preferable to loss of innocence

"We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses." - Abraham Lincoln.

Spring Has Sprung! (Moccasins)

Well, I think spring is finally here. The spring birds are, for the most part, all back and singing outside. The sun is shining and I haven't seen any snow for a week or so. We're looking at getting more chicks. We started out (8 years ago) with 26. We lost some and gained some but now we're down to one. I think she looks rather lonely sitting on the roost at night by herself.

Anyhow, I thought I would share some of my favorite spring pictures, historical dresses or otherwise to get you into the mood. Enjoy!

Love those hats, especially the blue one! Why don't more people wear hats?

Four lovely ladies, all dressed up. I wonder why they were dressed like that? Were they picnicking? Play croquet on the lawn? About to go out visiting?

Because every now and then, you need a rabbit driving a car with a huge red egg in the backseat.

And pussy willows, because I love pussy willows.

On another note, I have started making myself a pair of moccasins. Long story short, my feet don't like shoes of any kind. I tend to get blisters if I hike for more than about an hour in anything.

My Grandpa brought down some beautiful chocolate brown leather for me yesterday. (The picture makes it look a lot grayer than it really is.) I drafted my pattern using this site and cut it out. A few trials runs (on scrap cotton) with the pattern later, I cut the leather. Now I just need to get some thicker thread as well as a needle or an awl that will actually go through the leather. I suppose it's such a good thing the leather is as tough as it is. :) It feels so soft against your skin and it smells delicious! I can't wait to get them done!

As weird as it looks, this turns into a moccasin!

Hope your spring is going well so far!