SPELLING BEE

Roses for almost every reason

“Trust yourself – You know more than you think you do.”

-Dr. Spock Gardening and spring time are still events to take place at a later time period, so I decided I had time to do some indoor appliance repairs again. I am looking back at my past efforts (and probably was crazy to do some of them) that turned out successfully and got a lot of confidence I could give the Dyson DC28 Animal Airmuscle vacuum cleaner a repair whirl. I did have the dishwasher, refrigerator ice maker, refrigerator filter change, and Wolf burner tune up among my “turned out all okay” projects. In addition to YouTube, my Sister Shelly was visiting and she has a lot of vacuum cleaner fixing up and repair under her belt and could give good advice. I kind of treat my vacuum cleaner as a guest and let it rest a long time in between uses so I have not been faithful with all the upkeep of the machine. After removing a ton of hidden vintage husky and cat hair and lots of washing and brushing, my vacuum can really do what it was designed to do – suck up stuff. It was very good at rolling the stuff it was supposed to be sucking up into balls and leaving them on the floor. The poor thing had no way to send the “stuff” to the collection container. The hoses were blocked and the filters could no longer filter what they were supposed to. I will try to be a better vacuum cleaner Mom.

We have slipped past the middle of February which means we have passed Valentine's Day. Hopefully the memories of it will help get you through February and once March gets here we can say April is not far behind. I promised I would look up the history of flowers for Valentine's Day. We will just be ahead of information time for next year.

Some say that Chaucer linked love with St. Valentine's Day in his 14th century writing of “The Parliament of Fowls”. It was not until about mid 19th century that the flower part came to be a regular part of the event. It is said that men were the ones that really liked getting flowers but somehow or other it got worked around to be the ladies getting them. The thing to remember is that at that time, what the flowers were supposed to mean was the super important thing. It probably varied but each flower had a specific meaning. Roses happened to have love associated with them but wait – the COLOR was critical. Today the color red is almost the only color anyone thinks of for the day, but there is more to the color story of roses.

A RED rose is looked at as the true “I love you” statement. A PALE PINK rose says “I appreciate you”. This is one that can be given to mothers, sisters and close friends. Maybe this is an extra because you already should be loving your mother and sisters? A BRIGHT PINK roses says “I'm grateful – happiness – appreciation”. A PURPLE rose makes the statement “I always knew you were the one”, and also means noble or grand. A WHITE rose has a meaning of “Young love – it's early in our relationship but I like you a lot”. And yes, we are going to go with a BLACK rose. This is a tricky one as it can say “This is the end of our relationship”. But it also can represent passion, lust or magic. You really have to know the person very well or remember if she (or he) has said, “I really, really love to get black flowers”. If all else fails or you just can't decide you can go with a KALEIDOSCOPE rose which says “You are everything to me”.

Since I don't want to be the cause of relationship problems due to the color of the roses received for Valentine's Day, I will say be aware that this was information not widely known before the holiday. You as loyal readers may be one of a few with this great knowledge. Use it wisely!

The meaning of a flower was very important to people in past times and you had to be very knowledge before sending flowers to another person. You could send a bad message without saying a word! More next week.

Bea Westerberg [email protected]