Day 1

Hanabira

To me, flowers are a subject of photograph, a gift and also a part of the plant's reproductive system. During my graduation day, it was the first time that I have received more than a bouquet of flowers. To be frank I am not exactly a flower person but I admit that I was happy when receiving them. Who doesn't likes pretty things?

Come to think of it, it is not easy to select flower bouquets that looked gorgeous and manage to convey appropriate meanings (and of course, the challenges of getting a flower bouquet that has a reasonable price). I supposed not much of us have deep understanding in Floriography, which is the language of flowers. Each type of flowers have its own meaning, for instance, red roses symbolizes love while white roses it symbolizes purity. Recognizing types of flowers is not easy for me, remembering their language? That is even more challenging, I guess I would just choose to trust the florist or Google. 

After receiving the flower bouquets, we can preserve them by either making them last longer or drying them. I choose to keep them looking lively for a longer period before making them into dry flowers thus transferring them into a vase, soaking part the stems in a mixture of apple cider vinegar and sugar.  Sugar have the function of making the flowers blossom for a longer time while the vinegar prevents build-up of bacteria. The damaged ends of the stem have to be cut off and the flowers were also being trimmed. For another vase I was using normal tap water instead of the sugar and vinegar mixture to compare their results, so far the difference does not seem to be significant, maybe that it is only effective when the flowers are still very fresh.

The vase was too small so I had to cut of part of the flowers from its stem, placing them at a separate place

On the second day, the flowers look wilted and the water inside one of the vase actually turned brown. Flowers without its roots unable to last for long. I had to go through the whole process of trimming and changing the water supply, hoping that it would keep it alive for another one to two days.

Tap water chages from clear to  brownish color

Trimming and transferring them into glasses for the second time

The roses are really fragile, whenever the wind blows or slight force applied on it or the vase its petal would fall off. Looking at the flowers reminds me of the fact of beauty doesn't last and it takes great effort in preserving them for a longer period, not for eternal. 

In "Dream of the Red Chamber"(紅樓夢), there is one part where the heroine Lin DaiYu started to feel melancholy after seeing dead flowers and petals. She proceeded to write a poem for flowers, and she and her maid collected the dead flowers and petals, wrapping them using silk cloth before burying them into the ground. Since it is a literature piece I believed that it is exaggerated, usually flowers were presented during funerals instead of having a funeral for themselves. 

So besides being a subject of a photograph, a gift and also a part of the plant's reproductive system, I guess flowers is also qualified as a writing material or some melancholy triggering material.