My Favourite Flowers

by Leo & Rose

Personally, I can't see much point in flowers, you can't eat them and you can't play with them, but my devoted slave likes them for some reason and always has vases of the things in the house that I have to be careful not to knock over !Therefore I've asked her to write my essay for me, maybe when I've read it, I'll learn what she likes about flowers!

Purrs Leo

I love flowers, they are so bright and colourful. If I feel sad, looking at flowers always cheers me up as they seem to symbolise hope and triumph over adversity, especially the early snowdrops and crocuses of Spring, braving the frosts to bring a welcome splash of colour back to the gardens, or the thistle which pushes it's way through concrete, something a human would need a pickaxe and hours of hard labour to accomplish.

Although yellow isn't a colour, I like for clothes or furnishings, I love the cheerful yellow daffodils which adorn in every garden and grass verge in March and April, proclaiming that Spring is here at last. Then comes the Cherry blossom, an amazing abundance of delicate pink or white blooms, which provide a glorious show each April in suburban gardens, all the more beautiful for the poignant knowledge that it lasts only a week or two before falling in flurries of fading petals that lie that snow on the ground.

Bluebells are another delight of an English springtime, briefly carpeting the woodlands with their beautiful blue flowers. Often the pink campions grow alongside them in perfect contrast.

Much as I love these flowers though, my favourites have yet to come, poppies and roses. I can't say which I like the best as I love both equally. What can beat a dark red rose, delicately perfumed at the moment of its perfection, just before it opens fully? I think it's no accident that roses have been used as a symbol of love throughout the ages, though what we consider a typical rose nowadays, is a comparatively recent development of the horticulturists.

Although dark red roses are my favourites, I also love them in any shade, yellow, pink or white and always delight in finding one at it's most perfect the petals still curled.

The pink and white wild roses which date back longer than anyone knows can still be found in cottage gardens and hedgerows. There was even The War of the Roses in 15th century England when the rival houses of York and Lancaster used white or red roses as their Emblems as they fought for the throne.

Eventually Henry of Lancaster won the Battle of Boworth filed and married Elizabeth of York, creating the emblem of the Tudor rose, so what could be more English than a rose ?

Roses have thorns which make them appropriate as a symbol of love as every relationship has its ups and downs or "thorny" patches as does life itself. Another flower I love is the pansy with its cheerful face, who can look at them without smiling? I've an especial affection for the tiny violas which my Aunt used to grow when I was a young child.

I can never see peonies either, without thinking of my Aunt who used to grow them to be ready for the Whitsuntide service at the local church. They are attractive flowers, but a trifle too overblown, to be one of my favourites I love poppies too ,attractive though the cultivated ones are, it's the wild ones which always delight me, maybe because nowadays they are a rarity with the virtual disappearance of the traditional English meadow, where the poppies would grow alongside the cornflowers and buttercups. The cornflower isn't an especially attractive flower but it maybe the most beautiful colour of all flowers. Poppies can transform the dreariest wasteland into a riot of scarlet glory.

Poppies fade if you pick them and they teach you to treasure the fleeting moment.

I love to see buttercups in a meadow and delicate pink tipped daisies on a lawn or wayside ,the cheerful dandelions which as a child I remember my Aunt dismissing as weeds and constantly trying to eliminate, and in the early Autumn, the rosebay willow herb covers every available inch of ground in a splash of purple. My Mother told me the flowers grew on bomb sites during and after the Second World War and were seen as a symbol of hope and the renewal of life.

I dislike gardening and see wild flowers to be no way inferior to their cultivated counterparts as both are equally beautiful in my eyes.

I'm sad that Michaelmas Daisies are rarely seen nowadays,they were another of my Aunt's favourites and used to bloom in every English garden. They were all different shades of purple and usually came in flower for my birthday.

The chrysanthemums come last, I especially like the double bronze ones shaped like mini globes a colour not seen in other flowers.The Supermarket ones are available all year round but they lack the distinctive scent of those grown in gardens,if I envisage of the scent of Autumn, it has to be chrysanthemums and fallen leaves.

I buy flowers from the shops and place them by my Mother's portrait and enjoy them, but the very profusion of single chrysanthemums, carnations and gerbera makes them just too ordinary and readily available to count them amongst my favourites. I realise, writing this that it's the very fleetingness of roses and poppies and knowing I must treasure them when I can find them, that makes them so special.

(C) Rose Moss