Snap goes the dragon...

I expected to see mock orange on my way to work, and I did. What I didn't expect was to see snapdragon's in someone else's garden - never noticed them before, but today, I looked at them and smiled with a sort of affectionate fellow feeling.

The language of flowers

Because of acampbell's latest dodecal at svdodecals about the language of flowers, I looked the subject up - it's one I quite enjoy. I am fascinated by languages and symbolic languages, regardless of form - any kind of semiotics, from the visual connotations of comics and manga to the symbols that identify saints and all such manner of languages, symbols, images and codes.

Of course I looked up all the flowers that acampbell had Lex giving Clark, so I know exactly what Lex was saying to him. Heh. Romantic, snarky bugger.

I looked up the snapdragon, because of my recent quiz result as to what kind of flower I ought to be. (I keep wondering if it fits,a nd if so, how: 'not very pretty, but goofy'?) In the symbolic language of flowers, snapdragon signifies "total indifference". There may be things I am indifferent to, but I can't think what!

Is there any textual linkage of Aragorn son of Arathorn with pines? It's the plant that signifies Hope. But of course Tolkien never emulated anyone else's linguistic/symbolic patterns if he could help it.

Martha Kent's plant should be the potentilla, which signifies "maternal love". I don't know the flower, but it looks like this:



Clark Kent should be the Water Lily - "pure of heart".

Lex: perhaps hollyhocks, for "ambition". Or, with that seductive mouth, mistletoe - "kiss me". Or amaryllis for "pride". Funny there isn't a flower that symbolizes "ambiguously gay sexy bald rich young guys".

Jonathan can be lavender - no, I'm not hinting at any hidden orientation issues, but it means "distrust" and I think Jonathan distrusts everyone except Martha.

Lionel can be narcissus (which means, obviously, "self") or the apple: "temptation", heh - this brings us back to Lex, the apple not falling far from the tree, and the apple of sweet temptation at the farmer's market in Metamorphosis. Or the dahlia, for "pomp".

Chloe is trickier; I'd pick her as bittersweet:




... which means "truth", and Chloe's main passion is to find and reveal the truth. Or we could assign her "bouquet of withered flowers" for "rejected love".

Pete Ross: ivy for friendship, or hyacinth for games and sports.

Notice how carefully I have avoided mentioning the flowers specifically in acampbell's dodecal.

One of the interesting things about my online research into the matter: I kept encountering conflicting symbolic attributions on different flower dictionaries. I also found several sites that began by saying something like: "using flowers to symbolize meaning started with the Victorian age...." and I can't help thinking: Have these people never seen (or read) Hamlet? Don't they know about Roman laurel leaves or Biblical palm leaves?

The Victorians may have enjoyed playing with the language of flowers, but they certainly didn't start the trend.

Flower talk again....

acampbell said she didn't mind that I was going on about the subject, so I thought I'd take the liberty of decoding the flowers of her dodecal in my LJ here. The docecal is at svdodecals, dated yesterday, Say It With Flowers.

In the dodecal, Lex talks about fennel and columbines. I didn't check Shakespeare and I don't quite remember what Ophelia says except of course 'rosemary, that's for remembrance", which Clark quotes. And 'wear your rue with a difference'. Nice phrases.

Anyway, I saw fennel listed as "flattery" at one website and "worthy of all praise" at another. Columbines = "folly".

In the dodecal Lex then gives Clark a hand-picked bouquet, as follows:
red rose = "I love you"
yellow tulip = "perfect lover"
carnation = "lasting fidelity and love, fascination, pure love"

And mixed with it:
mock orange = "deceit"

Did I get the puzzle right, Alison?

I found the best site was Comfy Country Creations Flower Language Dictionary. It's where I found most of the above.

You can get really elaborate with roses, depending on the colour and the number of stems in a bouquet.

Today in ten words and ten sentences....

From Daily Zen:

Summarize your day in ten sentences

(1) Sunshine: The day seemed filled with flowers in the sunshine: poppies with crepe petals, snapdragons that were red with white tongues, buttercups, daisies, a huge leaning sunflower on the balcony on the second floor, and hundreds of growing things that I can't begin to identify in neighbourhood gardens.

(2) Laughter: We were watching the Smallville episode "Nocturne", which I was taping for chinae, and maboroshimaki decided to liven things up with visual aids: Clark's face in place on Lana's when Lex recites the love poem; green-tinted lenses for when Byron decides to turn into the Hulk and smash people; some poetry written by Clark; a Small Park Lionel cutout (drawn by goss) for Byron to kneel to on the porch.

(3) Curiosity: We watched trailers for "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and speculated on the slash possibilities.

(4) Greed: I ate three illicit chocolate chip cookies.

(5) Pride: I lost another pound. (What, have I fallen into the seven deadly sins here? This sentence doesn't count, it is a digression.)

(6) Peace: When I did yoga at Aliya's place this morning, the new meditation was particularly restful and the baby stayed asleep.

(7) Busy: At work, it was time for the ads for the upcoming play, the upcoming auditions, and the PR for both, while the photocopier was non-functional and the repairman didn't call.

(8) Challenging: I made tabouli from my favourite recipe, which calls for cucumber and tomato and canned chickpeas, all of which are forbidden on my current diet, so I substituted cooked and chilled cauliflower, to good effect.

(9) Cute: lmondegreen caught a glimpse of the baby budgie behind Wisdom in the nesting box, though I've yet to see her.

(10) Creative: I wrote several paragraphs to add to my current Clex story before I went to yoga before work, and though happy with what I have, I wished I had more time to work on the story today.