The Language of Flowers

St. Valentines Day is creeping up on us which means flowers, flowers and more flowers.  During the 1800s, a time of symbolism and poetry, there were set symbolic meanings behind gifts of flowers. While certain meanings varried from place to place, many manuals existed to help people choose their flowers carefully so as to not give false intentions. So, to prevent all of the gentleman from saying "You are a sickly, ill-natured beauty with a changeable disposition" to their sweethearts, here is a short little guide for the common flowers of today.( A helpful hint: deep-red roses symbolize "Bashful Shame.") 

 

Common-modern-day flower meanings and etching excerpted from: The Illustrated Language of Flowers by Anna Christian Burke (1856):

Daffodils: Regard  

Roses: Love

Deep-Red Roses: Bashful Shame

Burgundy Roses: Beauty, Unconscious 

White Roses: "I am worthy of you."

Yellow Roses: Decrease of Love/ Jealousy

One Single Rose: Simplicity

Thornless Roses: Early Attachment

Red and White Roses, together: Unity

White Lilies: Youthful Innocence 

Imperial Lilies/ Oriental Lilies: Majesty 

Red Tulips: Declaration of Love

Yellow Tulips: Hopeless Love

Variegated Tulips (Tulips with more than one color on each petal): Beautiful Eyes

Fern (commonly "leatherleaf" today): Fascination

May everyone enjoy the holiday. I hope the flowers bring joy and color to this bleak snowy February. I do not personally like the commercial nature that has evolved, although I do admit the world needs more love. I strongly urge :D everyone to make their own Valentine's Day cards. Handmade cards are the best and they can mean so much more than a card picked out from the store. In past times valentines were given anonymously. It would be very fun and romantic to bring back that tradition! 

Some thoughts on Valentine's Day from 1864 can be read in The Book of Days. It is interesting to read about.   

Winter Storm: Civil War Snowball Fights

A winter storm started last night as small fluffy flakes floating down and disapearing on the pavement. This morning it has colected into a superb winter storm. The trees have a layer of snow accenting their branches and the world is silent. Snow has a way of silencing the air and cold snow makes people consider the act of hibernation. Many of us wrap up in blankets and sit by the fire or watch the snow fall as if we were living in our own little snow globe. 

During the Civil War, snowball fights were a pastime of many children and also many soldiers. Snowball fights sometimes just occurred between members of the same company but occasionally one or more companies would fight each other. Soldier letters and memoirs tell us that snowball fights were sometimes just as dangerous as real battle, many men suffered from broken teeth and bones from snowballs filled with ice or stones. One "snow battle" took place in 1864 near Dalton, Georgia. During this snow battle, two whole divisions participated, took prisoners and were commanded by real commanders to the calls of buglers. Can you picture your boss leading your coworkers into "battle?" After the battle one general even gave his men a ration of whiskey, a rare item in the south usually reserved for hospitals. It is no wonder, one Arkansas soldier described the snow fighting: “Such pounding and thumping, and rolling over in the snow, and washing of faces and cramming snow in mouths and in ears and mixing up in great wriggling piles together.” 

 
 This picture illustrates The Great Snowball Fight of Rappahannock Academy on February 25, 1863 which 10,000 Confederate troops are reported as participating in. More on this snowball fight can be read here.

These soldier snowball fights sound crazy! A hint as to how dangerous they could be can be gleaned from these students from Princeton who participated in the Freshman-Sophomore Snowball Fight around 1892. The three boys, Darwin R. James, John P. Poe, and Arthur L. Wheeler were from the class of 1895. I love this picture! Are these anyone's great-grandparents?

(*Note:Photo courtesy of Princeton University Archives)

Today I am enjoying the snow and plan to make hot chocolate for when we are finally able to shovel our driveway. My bunny, Boo is in hibernation mode; all she wants to do is cuddle. here she is, sleeping in my mother's arms. She falls right asleep and loves to be wrapped up in a blanket. I hope everyone enjoys the snow and is careful during snowball fights! 

Making Onigiri : Japanese Rice Balls

A few nights ago my little sister and I made Onigiri (o-NI-gi-ri.) I bought her a Japanese cookbook for her birthday that specialized in "Bento Box" food. Bento Boxes are pretty much Japanese style lunch boxes. Many come with chopsticks in the lid. Packing a Bento Box is an art, traditionally you are supposed to use five different colored foods when you pack them (an old-fashioned way to make sure you were getting all of your nutrients. All food was meant to be eaten at room temperature.

Making animals and fun shapes and pictures with the food in the boxes are an old tradition and many Japanese mothers compete with each other to make the prettiest food displays for their children's lunches.  The boxed lunches are making their way into other countries as a way to make healthy food more fun for children.  Processed foods are rarely included in bento boxes.

Here is a gallery of Bento Boxes: Air and Angels
And here are galleries of fun food displays (Really, check some of these out!):
Bento Box Art
Bento
Henny (Scroll down a bit)

Onigiri are rice balls which are typically wrapped with nori (toasted seaweed) and lightly salted. Some onigiri have fillings or are sprinkled with spices. We were going to eat them all by ourselves, so we only used 1 cup of rice.

We first filled a small saucepan with one cup of rice and one cup of water. We poured out the water and added a new cup 3 or 4 times until the water became clear. We then heated the rice on medium heat until it boiled up, then turned the burner on low and let the rice simmer until all of the water evaporated (about 20 minutes.)[ I thought I'd just point out, before I got comments about it: We aren't druggies, our mother has diabetes.]   

After the water had evaporated completely, we flipped the saucepan upside down (we did this over the sink, not trusting ourselves,) and held it that way about 3 minutes.





We placed a peice of plastic wrap over a glass measuring cup.

We then scooped the rice into the plastic wrap. We picked formed the plastic wrap into a satchel shape and molded the rice through it into triangle shapes. Test it to make sure it isn't too hot to handle-ours cooled quickly.

We cut nori (toasted seaweed) into one inch strips with scissors. Nori is available at most supermarkets. We wrapped on strip of nori around the bases of each rice ball. 

Finished rice balls. These were yummy. My sister liked them but thought we put too much seaweed on them.

There are much more detailed instructions on making onigiri at Just Hungry.

*Please forgive the photo of me, that's what you get when your sister wakes you up after you have gone to bed sick and says "I'm making rice balls!" and when you say "Good, have fun!" and roll over, she starts with the puppydog face and "I thought you were going to help me... I can't do it by myself..." I am feeling much better today.

Is Homemaking a Lost Art?

I have a whole weekend off (if you ignore copious amounts of homework)! I hope to do a lot of the housekeeping that I have been putting off. Anyone who has been in my room knows that it needs a cleaning badly! I love having a clean room, it helps me think better and feel better and it looks better (I’m sure there are a million reasons why a clean room is better than a messy one.) I also have this problem: if I put something away, I will not get around to finishing it (such as sewing, knitting drawing, homework and other projects.)

Homekeeping is an art that has to be perfected for many years. Sometimes I feel like I am wasting away years in school (which for everyone who is in college knows is a complete joke,) when I should be learning the art of homekeeping to be at least a little more prepared in the future. I know some awesome homemakers (check out Curious Acorn in the sidebar) that leave you in awe and some homemakers who haven’t quite gotten it all together or aren’t interested in providing a home for their family and while they consider themselves “homemakers” are rather more like “housekeepers.”

I am astonished at how coveted homemakers were up until recently—somewhere around the time that children started hitting their teachers and the average age of lost virginity became 16. Things that children do in school is appalling and if our parents had done these things when they were in school, they would have been hit. Many parents today are more interested in working to pay for nice things rather than nurture their children and raise them in a loving environment. I was saddened by this comment on this site when a homemaker asked “Have I wasted 20 years as a Homemaker?” and one response was “The question: have I wasted 20 years of my life as a home maker? The answer is YES. Have you spoken to your kids lately? Do they have any respect for you? Does your husband? Unless you have had a job or have worked, I hate to break the news to you, BUT no one respects you.” What job is harder than homemaking? It seems like a worthy aspiration so why is it so frowned upon in American society? 

*Note: The first etching is from The London and Country Cook or, Accomplished Housewife by Charles Carter in 1749. Those chores look like a lot more fun in that clothing. I especially like the small details such as the bee skeps, the drying herbs, the rotisserie chicken and the little kitten in the kitchen waiting to steal fish. It’s a really cute etching.

Trip to Gettysburg

Yesterday, some of my Civil War reenacting company and I went to the Gettysburg Battlefield. Some of the guys went because, although they had been to the town of Gettysburg, they had never been on the battlefield! We took the opportunity to find out specifics of where our historical company would have been during the battle and the routes that they took.

It is amazing looking at the battlefield, pictures cannot convey the vastness and the distances. It was raining but no one really cared and we had a great time, although our feet were cold. 

During the fight on Big Round Top, this wall was just about as far as most of the 3rd Arkansas advanced. From this picture, you truly can't see how steep this climb really is. Many of the rocks on the hill are the size of cars.


The 3rd Arkansas had 479 men in the battle, It only lost 41 men directly, 101 were wounded and 40 were missing or captured.


 

We spent most of our time at Big Round Top, Andy read a few pages out of the 3rd Arkansas' Regimental history. It was really neat to hear about what our company would have been doing while seeing what they were seeing.

 This is a photograph of the "sharpshooter" position at Devil's Den. This was a confederate held position and is best known for the famous Alexander Gardener photograph of a dead confederate "sharpshooter." Most scholars agree that the photograph was staged, as many photographs were during the war. Many believe that the photographers moved the body to this location on a blanket to create a more dramatic photograph. Nothing indicates that that soldier was really a sharpshooter, he is photographed with a regular rifle.

Alexander Gardener commented in a book he wrote, that he saw this particular body and rifle a few months after the battle, still unburied. This was very unlikely as many relic hunters scoured the battlefield in search of souvenirs. The fact that the photographers photographed this body numerous times may indicate that most of the bodies had already been buried and they were running out of subjects. The same body seems to be photographed in both photos below.

*Note: The Alexander Gardener photographs are from the Library of Congress.