Tuesday 25 March 2014

The Language Of Flowers


 
Today I've finally found some time to write a new post after many busy days!!!
I received this book, " The Language of flowers",  from a friend as a gift for my birthday and I really devoured it!!!
It is a heartbreaking and redemptive novel about the meaning of flowers, the meaning of family, and the meaning of love.
 
The Victorian language of flowers was used to express emotions: honeysuckle for devotion, azaleas for passion, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it has been more useful in communicating feelings like grief, mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen, Victoria has nowhere to go, and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. When her talent is discovered by a local florist, she discovers her gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But it takes meeting a mysterious vendor at the flower market for her to realise what's been missing in her own life, and as she starts to fall for him, she's forced to confront a painful secret from her past, and decide whether it's worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness.
 
This amazing book is the first novel of Vanessa Diffenbaugh who, to write this story, has drawn inspiration from her own experience as a foster mother.
She is determined to take care of children without a family and, with her husband, she has created a non-profit association called " Camelia Network", an on-line community which harnesses the power of new technology to connect youth "aging out" of the foster care system with a community of resources, opportunities, encouragement and support.
As a woman and a social worker I really admire this writer and her strong determination. When I finished to read this book I felt full of hope in the possibility of people to find love and to learn how to give love to the others, despite their difficult past as neglected children.
 

I want to leave you with my favourite poem of William Wordsworth: " Daffodils", a flower that I love and that, in the victorian language of flowers, means " new beginnings".
 
"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils. "
    

Have you read this book? What do you think about the victorian language of flowers? Do you use it when you give flowers?
 
Love
xoxo
Martina
 
 
 


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