Floriography, by Gina Margolies — WhatsMyBirthMonthFlower?

Happy September! After our annual August break, Birthday Blossoms is delighted to be back at work, bringing birth month flower joy to our customers and friends. September’s birth month flower is the lovely aster, sign of autumn and all its glories. To celebrate this beautiful bloom, we have some news to share. We have several new Birthday Blossoms field trips planned, so be on the lookout for photos, interesting tidbits, and maybe even a guest vlogger. Birthday Blossoms is also excited to announce a new line of birth month flower designs. We know you love the original designs and we...

"People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things around us."                                                                       - Iris Murdoch  

Here at Birthday Blossoms, we love when birth month flowers pop up in unexpected places. We recently spotted November’s birth month flower on a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The current exhibition Lineages: Korean Art at the Met features pieces from The Met’s historical collection as well as loans of modern and contemporary Korean art. The blend of a backward glance with a forward vision spotlights much that is beautiful and interesting about Korean art. The gallery is quite small, and the pieces are close enough to whisper to one another, sharing themes,...

October’s birth month flower is the marigold. This orange beauty is the flower of the herb calendula officinalis. Thanks to their sunny orange hues, marigolds are often used to brighten up a garden or a room. But those lovely petals have other gifts to offer. Marigolds possess natural astringent, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory properties, which means they can lend a helping hand in several ways. Marigold is an aid to healing skin wounds, rashes, bug bites, and, thanks to its antifungal properties, even athlete’s foot. Marigold doesn’t just brighten up the garden, it is a valuable tool in nature’s medicine cabinet.

Why do people like flowers so much? Here at Floriography, we often ponder thisquestion. Previous posts have explored various reasons: reminder of the renewal of life,innate desire for beauty, natural attraction to floral scents. We even analyzed themathematics of flowers in an effort to understand the appeal. (Believe it or not, that postis our most popular to date.) Another possible explanation for the perennial appeal offlowers is color. The word color has multiple meanings. In the natural world, color is the property ofproducing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way the object reflects oremits light. Science...