Regular Random: five minutes with roses

/ Su Leslie
yellow roses on red fabric. Image: Su Leslie,2018

“The rose and the thorn, sorrow and gladness are linked together.” — Saadi.  Image: Su Leslie, 2018

I don’t often buy cut flowers.

On one hand, there is something very special about a vase of flowers in the house.

On the other, the environmental cost of growing, transporting and packaging these ephemeral delights is extremely high.

But today, after a fairly intense emotional tussle, my desire for beauty beat my social conscience.

Image Su Leslie

Regular Random is a photo challenge hosted by Desley Jane at Musings of a Frequently Flying Scientist. If you’d like to join in:

  • choose a subject or a scene
  • spend five minutes photographing it – no more!
  • try to not interfere with the subject, instead see it from many angles, look through something at it, change the light that’s hitting it
  • have fun!
  • tag your post #regularrandom and ping back to Desley’s post

36 thoughts on “Regular Random: five minutes with roses”

    • There are so many (types/breeds/flavours) of rose. I love walking in the Rose Gardens looking at all the cool names they are given. Even better when they are scented. And at least in the Rose Garden I’m not the only crazy lady sticking my nose into the blooms 🙂

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  6. Perhaps it will ease your social conscience that your purchase has brought pleasure and beauty to others. And just a thought, do you know what happens to the unsold flowers at your florist or your supermarket? I know there is a woman in Christchurch who collects unsold or unwanted flowers and donates them to homes and care facilities etc.

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    • Thank you. That is a very good question. I have no idea what happens to unsold flowers here. Although I mentioned to Janet in another comment that we were donated a huge number (about 10 buckets full) of daffodils from a commercial grower for my mother in law’s funeral as they were “seconds” and he couldn’t sell them. It was extraordinarily generous of him. But I have no idea what he normally did. The nursery just happened to be close by and my sister in law dropped in on the off-chance that he might sell us some for the funeral.

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  10. People earn a living from you buying those flowers, Su, and many get pleasure from the photos as well as the pleasure you take from them. Besides, it’s not as if you’re buying them every day. I love flowers as well, although my latest are bulbs, so I’ll be able to plant them outside, if it ever gets warm enough, and enjoy them next spring.

    janet

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    • Thanks Janet. I think I really should put my money (or at least labour) where my mouth is, and grow flowers that can be cut. I know it’s an industry that provides employment, but the more I learn, the more I think it’s also an industry that needs a re-think.
      My mother in law loved daffodils and when she died, my sister in law visited a commercial flower grower looking to make a bulk order of daffodils to have around the house during the funeral. The grower gave s-i-l buckets full of them because they weren’t “good enough” for sale and they would have been disposed of otherwise. They were beautiful flowers and none of us could see the “imperfections” that made them unsaleable. To me that goes against the essence of what flowers mean to us. They are about love and sharing — not about money and “perfection”.

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