A Mother’s Day Gift That is Alive and Growing!
Posted by admin | Under Mother's Day Flowers Thursday Mar 4, 2010What are your thoughts as Mother’s Day is fast approaching? Are you wondering how best to show your feelings for your mother on Mother’s Day? What is the perfect gift that can convey your genuine love and care for your mother without giving hints of flattery or appeasement?
You might get overwhelmed by the variety of Mother’s Day gifts that are available in the market. If you are like many others, you would want to gift her with flowers, especially if she is someone who loves flowers. Because of the traditional associations made, the first flower that comes to mind might be carnations! The association between Mother’s Day and Carnations is very strongly embedded in our minds. There is even an early Christian legend according to which carnations are the flowers that sprung up when the tears of the mother of Christ fell on the ground as she saw the sufferings of her son.
Flowers are very popular on Mother’s Day and they are almost indispensable as gifts on the occasion. You could easily get carnations, hyacinths, tulips, and daffodils for her.
OK, if not carnations or any of the other three mentioned above, you could give other flowers like roses and orchids. Or a mix of carnations, orchids, and roses. Are you happy with these? Or do you, like me, feel that these flowers do not make such great gifts because they removed from their natural surroundings?
Without completely discarding traditional notions, consider this question with an open mind: ‘are carnations the best plant and flower related gift you could give your mother?’ In other words, can you give something that is fuller and more organic than mere flowers?
That is where my suggestion gets its relevance. Gift your mother with flowering plants. They are better than mere flowers because of many reasons. They are alive, inspiring, and ecologically more meaningful. Moreover, they give your mother a chance to make her garden richer and more beautiful.
That being the main focus, let us start off with some other Mother’s Day gifts!
Simple and homemade gifts for mom
A very simple and telling way of showing your mother that you care is by doing everything for her on Mother’s Day. Let her relax on her most comfortable chair and read her favorite book and watch television. You could cook her favorite seafood dish or prepare her favorite dessert.
Crafts are a popular gift item for Mother’s Day. You can make them using common things such as paper by following simple instructions. Or you could write a genuine and unaffected letter for her. If you are comfortable with the medium of poetry, you could write her a poem that would delight her.
Jewelry pieces such as bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and rings can make excellent Mother’s Day gifts. In the apparel category, there are some interesting modern trends. A popular Mother’s Day gift these days is a nice T-shirt set for both the mother and the child.
Now we will move to the natural gifts category, the one that includes plants and flowers.
Plants and flowers for mom
Flowering plants being more natural and alive, they should logically make great gifts. It is surprising why they haven’t become very popular as yet.
Flowering plants are novel gift items for Mother’s Day. These are likely to be more-than-welcome gift for a mother who has been getting carnations year after year. They can be given in various types of containers. You could consider gifting them in baskets, pots, and metallic containers.
Undoubtedly, these plants are going to matter a lot to mothers who love gardening. They have the extra charm of being living things as compared to flowers, which are, although attractive, placed out of context because they are plucked out of nature.
If your mother is a lover of gardening, one of the best things you could do to her is to gift her with a pot of flowering plants. The longer the time she spends with the plants,the better she would feel about your gift and the good emotions that inspired you to give her that gift.
You could buy planted flowers from a good online florist. If you just go to their site and search for their Mother’s Day catalog, you would come across some nice planted flowers. You might even gather enough audacity to go beyond the usual carnations and buy plants.
You could get some add-ons too, such as wine, chocolates, and soft toys. Based on your mother’s likes and dislikes, you can decide whether it is appropriate or not.
Jobin K. Mathew
http://www.articlesbase.com/advice-articles/a-mothers-day-gift-that-is-alive-and-growing-138580.html
Could you help summarize this poem?
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother’s laps,
And here you are the mother’s laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.
It’s really not that hard to understand. Realize that Whitman believed poetry existed and the poet translated what he heard. The dead are still speaking and the poet hears and translates their words.
This excerpt from Song of Myself is perhaps my favorite piece of poetry ever. Thanks for giving me a chance to read it again unexpectedly.
References :