Should You Start a Homebased Floriography Business Making Tussie Mussies?

Express your green health in floriography with tussie mussies to bring green health to your area. During Victorian times in the USA and in some European countries, floriography, became the secret language of flowers helped to foster green health by delivering messages that were difficult to put into words. But the other person needs a definition of what the secret life of flowers is actually saying through visual meaning. After all, the message is human-made about the intention of the flower or the arrangement.

If you're looking to start a green health business in your home-based office, you could make tussie-mussies and include a card or flyer explaining what message the flower species and the arrangement is supposed to convey. Should you start a homebased floriography business making tussie mussies? The secret language of flowers can create a feeling of joy or give an answer when words aren't enough.That's the important point to remember--visuals versus text when it applies to promoting green health in Sacramento and elsewhere.

There's even a novel written by a former Sacramento book author, The Language of Flowers: A Novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, whose sold the rights to her first novel about the secret language of flowers. Last summer she moved with her family to Cambridge, MA where her husband, the former principal at Sacramento Charter School is studying for his doctoral degree at Harvard. Ballantine Bantam Dell is the publisher of Diffenbaugh's novel, The Language of Flowers. The novel is about how a woman's gift for flowers helps change the lives of other people.

And that idea is inspirational to Sacramentans who want to bring back the language of flowers in the form of tussie-mussies to convey what words can't say. So how would you like to open a business emphasizing green health by using the language of flowers? It could be one way to promote green health by random acts of kindness expressed through what flowers can symbolize that go beyond what words might convey.

If one flower is worth 1,000 pictures, and one picture is worth 1,000 words, than an arrangement of flowers could start spin-offs from dictionaries interpreting the different meanings of flowers to gifts that use flowers as the language of kindness instead of the language of incendiary or inflammatory negatives and expletives that you find so often these days on anonymous online social media sites and in movies. Can Victorian etiquette succeed in Sacramento in nonverbal messages conveyed through flowers and the way flowers are arranged to speak for you when words aren't enough?

See the sites, Flower Fairy Oracle Cards | The Victorian Language of Flowers, and The Forgotten Language of Flowers " Victorian Era " | Facebook. Also see, The Romantic Language of Flowers during the Victorian Era. Messages were conveyed through the language of flowers that lovers and people who were friends sent to one another. Flowers in and long before Victorian times had been a sign of romance. Different types of flowers were used by lovers to send secret messages by means of sending specific species of flowers. See the sites, Living Victorian Web Magazine - Journal, Flower language - love messages - floral symbolism and meaning, and the floriography site, Interpreting The Different Meanings Of Flowers.

According to the Victorian Bazaar website, The history and language of flowers and herbs - origins and meanings, flowers adorned almost everything, including hair, clothing, jewelry, gowns, men's lapels, home d©cor and china, and stationery, as well as the proper Victorian way to address women of various ages.

A young man could either please or displease a lady using a gift of flowers arranged in a specific way. It's not only the flowers that would convey messages of love or dislike, but also the type of arrangement of the flowers.

You wouldn't send a replica of the July 25, 1885 crepe that went up on storefronts in Sacramento to a lady of age because that arrangement signaled the death of General Grant on that day and year. That would be an insult to remind a woman of a certain age of her impending mortality or to remind her of the years she had left. No, you'd give her a flower arrangement signaling green health, to be evergreen.

The flowers and the arrangements held secret messages. Each message had been interpreted based on the size of the arrangement as well as the type of flowers used in the group. Not only did the message get interpreted by how the flowers were grouped together, but the reply also conveyed a secret message based on how the gentleman or the lady held the flower arrangement in her hands or displayed the flower bouquet or arrangement on which wall of which room in her home. The message also was in how the flowers were grouped together and in what flowers were used.

Each flour had a silent meaning. And moving out of the circle of secret messages, the arrangement itself also had a special meaning. What the flowers could convey or 'speak' had rules of Victorian etiquette, what someone would dare to say through he flower and the arrangement of the flowers.

And you spoke using flowers as words depending upon your position in society. A person of one socio-economic class had rules of what could be said through the use of flowers to a person of another socio-economic class level.

The Manners of Flowers

Victorian rules for how the manner in which flowers were sent had a special meaning in the way the flowers were expressed. For example, one flower presented in an upright position represented a positive thought. For example, a 'yes' answer. Or the upright flower could mean cheerfulness, comfort, happiness, and joy. But if you sent a flower positioned upside down in the "thumbs-down" stance, the downward direction of the flower or flower arrangement meant 'no' or anything you wanted to say that would be taken as negative.

Also a 'yes' answer meant offering one flower with only the right hand, even if you were naturally left-handed. By handing someone a flower using your right hand, it meant 'yes' or a positive answer, expression, exclamation, or a wish of hope for a positive result. But if you handed a flower to someone using your left hand, it meant a 'no' answer or a negative response to any given situation or question.

For example if you wanted to court someone, you'd present a flower with your right hand and get the 'yes' answer back from the other person using his or her right hand. The no answer to your right hand flower presentation would be the other person handing a flower back to you or your same flower back with the left hand.

No other words had to be spoken. Left hand meant no or negative and right hand meant yes or positive (agreement). People used to ask other people to marry using the right hand and get back their flower with the right or left hand depending upon whether the person said yes or no to your proposal using flowers as well as the position of flowers instead of words.

Victorian Dictionaries Explained the Language of Flowers

You could research the dictionaries written in the 19th century to explain this language of flowers to readers. But who used flowers the most to speak for them instead of using words or even written poems and letters? Lovers used the secret language of flowers and sometimes families used flowers instead of words to communicate feelings of yes and no to various issues, but most of all, flowers as a language was considered romantic and to be used by couples courting or wanting to court.

Dictionaries explained that roses symbolized love. But it gets more complex. Each variety of rose by name and species as well as the color of the rose and its scent conveyed a message of a different meaning. You'd have to consult these dictionaries to get the fine points of why red roses symbolized love and how they differed from messages conveyed by white, yellow, or pink roses.

You'd get a yellow rose of Texas, as the song goes, that is a woman wearing a yellow rose symbolizing waiting for her soldier husband, boyfriend, lover, parent, child or other loved one while that person was away at war or on a long journey far from home. It symbolized waiting for someone's return and also in memory. Today we have a yellow ribbon tied around a tree in memory of someone who is at war or who has perished as a hero.

There would be other symbols and events where you'd use a rose of a certain species or color, for example violet-colored roses compared to white roses, and roses for bridal bouquets symbolizing innocence of childhood or growing up and putting away the toys of childhood for the responsibilities of wife and mother. Red roses also were given on Valentine's days to people in love. And pink roses were given to new mothers to decorate the room for mother and newborn child.

Basically, each variety and color of flower had each, his own meaning with a deeper meaning in the way the flower was positioned and in the arrangement as well as how the arrangement was displayed in which room. The lily generally symbolized beauty, but it also has many varieties. Each variety of lily had a different meaning and was used to convey a different message or to signify a different purpose.

One Victorian issue arose when authors began to write a variety of dictionaries with different connotations, denotations, and meanings for the flowers and their arrangements or the way they are supposed to be handed to another person. When you have different dictionaries with varied meanings, you have the potential for miscommunication and more negativity based on the dictionary definition or explanation.

The problem with those Victorian dictionaries is accuracy and agreement on the secret language of flowers. There wasn't just one dictionary that everybody agreed was the one to use. There were several different dictionaries with a variety of interpretations. So if you want to write a dictionary in these days, you have to emphasize agreement on the explanations based on some validated evidence.

Tussie-Mussies as Gifts

In Victorian times, many cherished gifts put in keepsake albums and saved for decades were made up of flower arrangements and bouquets that were called tussie-mussies. If you want to bring back the tussie-mussie, you'd start by making a small bouquet of flowers wrapped in a lace doily and tied with satin. The selling point of tussie-mussies is the intrigue of secret messages. It was popular in Victorian times. Perhaps today, it could become popular again. You'd have to use real doilies crocheted of white lace, not the paper bakery doilies sold to put under cakes that look like lace.

The point of making and giving a tussie-mussie today is to get people to express feelings without using words. One type of arrangement says "you're invited to become my friend." Another type of arrangement says, "I love you." Still another arrangement says, "You're special." The point is first to have a dictionary written and published that most people agree upon to have the secret language of flowers actually say any of those words.

The point is that tussie-mussies are greeting cards as far as their place in society. Today we have paper and electronic greeting cards. From 1800 to 1900 you had flowers as greeting cards because back then the flowers signified the words that today you see on commercial greeting cards. And the purpose of the flower was to make your point in as few words as possible without requiring the other person to have to think of just the right answer or words for the answer to your question. It made response simple and direct.

Flowers were used when poetry would not be read or understood when put in words. That's because in poetry, the reader would have to read between the lines to understand the true feelings or thoughts of the author or person giving you the poem to read. With flowers, you wouldn't have to be verbally curious. You'd know at a glance whether a flower asked a question or whether the flower you handed back gave an answer without having to explain or defend your feelings.

Today, instead of a greeting card, you could give a tussie-mussie or make one. Only the person at the other end would need a short dictionary explanation of what the secret language of flowers actually is supposed to symbolize. Just giving flowers may not say what you mean because the flowers don't last very long, even if they are rooted in a flower container to be put in the garden.

You need a tussie-mussie packaged with an insert, a definition of what those flowers and their arrangement are supposed to say--what the message really is that you want understood. So if you give or create tussie-mussies, always include a card or flyer that explains what message the flowers are supposed to bring. It's one more way to bring green health to others by creating a feeling of joy or giving an answer when words are not enough.