Flowers, Flowers, Flowers!

From Publishers Weekly
Stewart, an avid gardener and winner of the 2005 California Horticultural Society's Writer's Award for her book The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, now tackles the global flower industry. Her investigations take her from an eccentric lily breeder to an Australian business with the alchemical mission of creating a blue rose. She visits a romantically anachronistic violet grower, the largest remaining California grower of cut flowers and a Dutch breeder employing high-tech methods to develop flowers in equatorial countries where wages are low. Stewart follows a rose from the remote Ecuadoran greenhouse where it's grown to the American retailer where it's finally sold, and visits a huge, stock –exchange–like Dutch flower auction. These present-day adventures are interspersed with fascinating histories of the various aspects of flower culture, propagation and commerce. Stewart's floral romanticism—she admits early on that she's "always had a generalized, smutty sort of lust for flowers"—survives the potentially disillusioning revelations of the flower biz, though her passion only falters a few times, as when she witnesses roses being dipped in fungicide in preparation for export. By the end, this book is as lush as the flowers it describes. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by Adrian Higgins

In an ideal world, we would buy cut flowers for a sweetheart's birthday from Teresa Sabankaya. From her green kiosk in Santa Cruz, Calif., she sells blooms that she has raised lovingly on her flower farm. Her flowers, held in buckets that crowd her stall, are "all interesting, unusual, old-fashioned, ephemeral, perfumy," Amy Stewart writes in her eye-opening new Flower Confidential. In summer, Sabankaya's customers grab larkspur and poppies; in winter, heathers and berried plants.

But this isn't how most American consumers get their flowers. Instead, our blooms are more likely to have been raised in high-altitude flower factories in Ecuador or Colombia, dunked in chemicals, flown to Miami and distributed to wholesale markets around the country. A rose cut on a Monday morning in the shadow of a snow-capped volcano might find its way to a Manhattan florist the following Friday, and then be good for a week or more with a little care. In your local supermarket, you will find roses completely devoid of fragrance -- pretty in a stiff and uniform sort of way, but not the earthy roses of the garden or Sabankaya's stall.

Indeed, readers of Flower Confidential will be surprised and appalled to learn the extent to which something as fleeting and romantic as a rose or a lily has been turned into an industrial widget. You might accept today that a desk fan or a flashlight has been made somewhere other than in the United States, but a flower? An old Irish song speaks of the last rose of summer "left blooming alone." But today, there is no last rose of summer, nor a first rose of spring -- just roses spewing forth continuously from the jet-age conveyor belt of floriculture. Stewart believes these roses are enchanting as a single bouquet, a personal expression of caring. But force us to look at the machinery of this mass production, as she does so well, and the feeling is a little more queasy.

Consider some statistics gathered by Stewart:

We consume 10 million cut flowers per day in the United States.

On a per capita basis, we still spend considerably less in a year on flowers than Europeans do -- $25.90 compared to, say, more than $70 in Norway or $100 in Switzerland.

Twelve years ago, there were 100 carnation growers in the United States; now there are 24.

While America's rose production has declined by almost three quarters in the past 12 years, it has soared in places such as Colombia, Ecuador and Kenya.

We buy most of our flowers at the grocery store, but we spend the most money when we order from independent florists struggling to maintain their retail foothold.

All of this reminds us that not even a flower is simple. Delving into the broader world of horticulture leaves one astonished by the complexity of how, say, a petunia arrives at the garden center. This humble flower is backed by a global labyrinth of breeders, seed companies, growers, marketers, sales representatives and shippers. The machinations of floriculture are made even more poignant by the fact that the moment a flower is cut, it begins to die. So flowers are for the moment, which raises their value as a currency of human sentiment. Creating them is a far less poetic affair.

Flowers are not just picked from the wild; each lily or amaryllis is hybridized for particular, commercially viable traits by specialists who devote their lives to doing so. Flower Confidential shows us the original breeder of the ubiquitous Stargazer lily, an eccentric and sad figure who failed to cash in on the flower's success. But Stewart, who writes regularly for Organic Gardening magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle, also reports on the sophisticated efforts to raise tulips, gerberas and lilies by one of California's remaining cut-flower producers, Sun Valley Floral Farms. It is run by a grower named Lane DeVries, who left his native Netherlands to build the enterprise into America's largest producer of cut flowers. The Dutch influence in the industry is pervasive and legendary. Stewart shows us the daily flower auction at Aalsmeer, a vast concrete complex near Amsterdam that is the major global market for cut flowers and potted plants -- a rather cold and soulless place for so beautiful a commodity.

The Dutch auctions are still vital to floriculture, but the shift in actual growing -- especially in the western hemisphere -- is to the Andes, a region of optimum cultivation conditions and cheap labor. Stewart draws a picture of Ecuador's flower industry that is alternately disturbing and encouraging. Human rights groups worry about nursery workers who receive just $150 a month and endure difficult conditions, including exposure to chemicals banned in the United States. Stewart also cites problems with sexual harassment and child labor. But as with some foodstuffs, retailers and consumers can now choose "green label" flowers whose growers pledge to look after their workers and the environment.

Stewart's journey takes us down many such paths, all connected by her own curiosity and highly readable prose. The greatest value of Flower Confidential, however, is that it was written at all. We know so little of the ways simple daily items are brought to us that such a book helps us grasp our modern world. Who knows? Flower Confidential may compel us to return to something purer, more local. It may send us in search of our own version of Teresa Sabankaya's flower kiosk.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Book Description


About the Author

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. See's engrossing novel set in remote 19th-century China details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends (laotong, or "old sames") Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love. While granting immediacy to Lily's voice, See (Flower Net) adroitly transmits historical background in graceful prose. Her in-depth research into women's ceremonies and duties in China's rural interior brings fascinating revelations about arranged marriages, women's inferior status in both their natal and married homes, and the Confucian proverbs and myriad superstitions that informed daily life. Beginning with a detailed and heartbreaking description of Lily and her sisters' foot binding ("Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you have peace"), the story widens to a vivid portrait of family and village life. Most impressive is See's incorporation of nu shu, a secret written phonetic code among women—here between Lily and Snow Flower—that dates back 1,000 years in the southwestern Hunan province ("My writing is soaked with the tears of my heart,/ An invisible rebellion that no man can see"). As both a suspenseful and poignant story and an absorbing historical chronicle, this novel has bestseller potential and should become a reading group favorite as well.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the edition.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Lily at 80 reflects on her life, beginning with her daughter days in 19th-century rural China. Foot-binding was practiced by all but the poorest families, and the graphic descriptions of it are not for the fainthearted. Yet women had nu shu, their own secret language. At the instigation of a matchmaker, Lily and Snow Flower, a girl from a larger town and supposedly from a well-connected, wealthy family, become laotong, bound together for life. Even after Lily learns that Snow Flower is not from a better family, even when Lily marries above her and Snow Flower beneath her, they remain close, exchanging nu shu written on a fan. When war comes, Lily is separated from her husband and children. She survives the winter helped by Snow Flower's husband, a lowly butcher, until she is reunited with her family. As the years pass, the women's relationship changes; Lily grows more powerful in her community, bitter, and harder, until at last she breaks her bond with Snow Flower. They are not reunited until Lily tries to make the dying Snow Flower's last days comfortable. Their friendship, and this tale, illustrates the most profound of human emotions: love and hate, self-absorption and devotion, pride and humility, to name just a few. Even though the women's culture and upbringing may be vastly different from readers' own, the life lessons are much the same, and they will be remembered long after the details of this fascinating story are forgotten.–Molly Connally, Chantilly Regional Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the edition.

Amazon.com
Daniel Keyes wrote little SF but is highly regarded for one classic, Flowers for Algernon. As a 1959 novella it won a Hugo Award; the 1966 novel-length expansion won a Nebula. The Oscar-winning movie adaptation Charly (1968) also spawned a 1980 Broadway musical.

Following his doctor's instructions, engaging simpleton Charlie Gordon tells his own story in semi-literate "progris riports." He dimly wants to better himself, but with an IQ of 68 can't even beat the laboratory mouse Algernon at maze-solving:

I dint feel bad because I watched Algernon and I lernd how to finish the amaze even if it takes me along time.

I dint know mice were so smart.

Algernon is extra-clever thanks to an experimental brain operation so far tried only on animals. Charlie eagerly volunteers as the first human subject. After frustrating delays and agonies of concentration, the effects begin to show and the reports steadily improve: "Punctuation, is? fun!" But getting smarter brings cruel shocks, as Charlie realizes that his merry "friends" at the bakery where he sweeps the floor have all along been laughing at him, never with him. The IQ rise continues, taking him steadily past the human average to genius level and beyond, until he's as intellectually alone as the old, foolish Charlie ever was--and now painfully aware of it. Then, ominously, the smart mouse Algernon begins to deteriorate...

Flowers for Algernon is a timeless tear-jerker with a terrific emotional impact. --David Langford --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


Flowers for Algernon is the journal of Charlie Gordon, a mentally retarded adult who becomes a genius after undergoing a brain operation. Keyes gives Charlie Gordon a voice that conveys the full range of emotions Charlie experiences before and after the operation. Keyes conveys the drama with such intensity that it becomes almost painful to listen: the yearning of an amiable adult who longs to be as smart as those around him, the pain of the transformed man who must live with the newfound memories of cruel childhood rejection, and finally the horror of his diminishing intellectual capacity. Flowers for Algernon has been popular in all its formatsÐshort story, television drama, movie and novel. This fine audio production should be equally so. C.R.A. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal
Grade 7 UpAThe ageless, timeless story of caterpillars, Strip and Yellow, unfolds as the author, Trina Paulus, reads it with as much enthusiasm as she had when it was originally published 25 years ago. It is a very simple story of life, death, goals, alternatives, anxiety, hope, and becoming which can be used by students on many levels, with each person gleaning an appropriate moral. Paulus' speech is gentle, and her belief in the story is shown in her very expressive voice. She enunciates very clearly, has good pacing, and changes tone and speech for the different characters. Short, pleasant musical interludes provide appropriate breaks between each chapter and set the mood for upcoming events. On Side 2 Paulus discusses the background for the story from the events in her life and the importance of various symbols used in the plot. Purchase for anyone who has challenges to overcomeAthis story could have as much of an audience as Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Claudia Moore, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Woman's Day
A wonderful new myth book. --This text refers to the edition.

Book Description
Once, all life in the universe knew the Flower of Life as the creation pattern - the geometrical design leading us into and out of physical existence. Then from a very high state of consciousness we fell in darkness and forgot who we were. For thousands of years the secret was held in ancient artifacts and carvings around the world, and encoded in the cells of all life.

Here Drunvalo Melchizedek presents in text and graphics the first half of the Flower of Life Workshop, illuninating the mysteries of how we came to be, why the world is the way it is and the subtle energies that allow our awareness to blossom into its true beauty.

Sacred Geometry is the form beneath our being and points to a divine order in our reality. We can follow that order form the invisible atom to the infinite stars, finding ourselves at each step. The information here is one path, but between the lines and drawings lie the feminine gems of intuitive understanding.

Explore the miracle of our existence by meandering through the wonderland of geometry, science, ancient history and new discovery, seen through the widened vision of Drunvalo and the Flower of Life. Volume 2 will explore in great detail the Mer-Ka-Ba, the 55-foot-diameter energy field of the human lightbody. This knowledge leads to ascension and the next dimensional world.

About the Author
Drunvalo Melchizedek's life experience reads like an encyclopedia of breakthroughs in human endeavor. He studied physics and art at the University of California at Berkeley, but he personally feels that his most important education came after college. In the last 25 years he has studied with over 70 teachers from all belief systems and religious understandings, providing him with a wide breadth of knowledge, compassion and acceptance.

Not only is Drunvalo's mind exceptional, but his heart, his warm personality, his love for all life everywhere, is immediately understood and felt by anyone who meets him. For some time now he has been bringing his vast vision to the world through the Flower of Life program and the Mer-Ka-Ba meditation. This teaching encompasses every area of human understanding, explores the development of mankind from ancient civilizations to the present time and offers clarity regarding the world's state of consciousness and what is needed for a smooth and easy transition into the 21st century.

Book Description

Book Description

SHE WAS TOO GROWN-UP FOR CHILDISH GAMES.

BUT TOO YOUNG TO BECOME A WOMAN. . . .

Living with her parents and brother, Ian, in her Grandmother Emma's enormous mansion, Jordan March tries to be a good girl and follow her grandmother's strict rules. It's easy for Jordan to hide in the shadows -- between Ian's brilliant, all-consuming talents for science and the ever-more-frequent arguments among the grown-ups. But one day, without warning, Jordan's body begins to change -- and everyone notices her in a way that seems dark, dangerous, and threatening. Suddenly the March family secrets are unleashed, and Jordan is ashamed and afraid that her soft curves are unwelcome indeed. Shipped off to a lakeside hideaway, Jordan and Ian befriend a girl whose shocking revelations make for a summer of scandal and explosive emotion. Outraged, Grandmother Emma sets out to make Jordan pay for her family's past mistakes, sending her world spinning wildly out of control. . . .

Book Description
What exactly does a flower girl do? What's the most fun part of a wedding? Does a flower girl get to wear make-up? What if she messes up? Little girls can find the answers to all of these questions and much more, as they follow the adventures of one little flower girl. A magical book--enhanced by sweet, quirky artwork that captures the wedding spirit-and a must for any child who's going to a wedding, participating in one.  

Card catalog description
Louisa is excited to be the flower girl at Uncle Jim's wedding.

Book Description
Way upstairs there are four secrets hidden.

Blond, beautiful, innocent little secrets, struggling to stay alive.

Flowers In the Attic

The four Dollanganger children had such perfect lives -- a beautiful mother, a doting father, a lovely home. Then Daddy was killed in a car accident, and Momma could no longer support the family. So she began writing letters to her parents, her millionaire parents, whom the children had never heard of before.

Momma tells the children all about their rich grandparents, and how Chris and Cathy and the twins will live like princes and princesses in their grandparents' fancy mansion. The children are only too delighted by the prospect. But there are a few things that Momma hasn't told them.

She hasn't told them that their grandmother considers them "devil's spawn" who should never have been born. She hasn't told them that she has to hide them from their grandfather if she wants to inherit his fortune. She hasn't told them that they are to be locked away in an abandoned wing of the house with only the dark, airless attic to play in. But, Momma promises, it's only for a few days....

Then the days stretch into months, and the months into years. Desperately isolated, terrified of their grandmother, and increasingly convinced that their mother no longer cares about them, Chris and Cathy become all things to the twins and to each other. They cling to their love as their only hope, their only strength -- a love that is almost stronger than death.

Book Description
The sacred Flower of Life pattern, the primary geometric generator of all physical form, is explored in even more depth in this volume, the second half of the Flower of Life workshop. The proportions of the human body, the nuances of human consciousness, the sizes and distances of the stars, planets and moons, even the creations of humankind, are all shown to reflect their origins in this beautiful and divine image. Through an intricate and detailed geometrical mapping, Drunvalo Melchizedek shows how the seemingly simple design of the Flower of Life contains the genesis of our entire third-dimensional existence.

From the pyramids and mysteries of Egypt to the new race of Indigo children, Drunvalo presents the sacred geometries of the Reality and the subtle energies that shape our world. We are led through a divinely inspired labyrinth of science and stories, logic and coincidence, on a path of remembering where we come from and the wonder and magic of who we are.

Finally, for the first time in print, Drunvalo shares the instructions for the Mer-Ka-Ba meditation, step-by-step techniques for the re-creation of the energy field of the evolved human, which is the key to ascension and the next dimensional world. If done from love, this ancient process of breathing prana opens up for us a world of tantalizing possibility in this dimension, from protective powers to the healing of oneself, of others and even of the planet.

Embrace the examined vision and understanding that Drunvalo offers to the world. Coincidences abound, miracles flourish and amazing stories of mysteries unveiled arise as the author probes the Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life.

About the Author
Drunvalo Melchizedek's life experience reads like an encyclopedia of breakthroughs in human endeavor. He studied physics and art at the University of California at Berkeley, but he personally feels that his most important education came after college. In the last 25 years he has studied with over 70 teachers from all belief systems and religious understandings, providing him with a wide breadth of knowledge, compassion and acceptance.

Not only is Drunvalo's mind exceptional, but his heart, his warm personality, his love for all life everywhere, is immediately understood and felt by anyone who meets him. For some time now he has been bringing his vast vision to the world through the Flower of Life program and the Mer-Ka-Ba meditation. This teaching encompasses every area of human understanding, explores the development of mankind from ancient civilizations to the present time and offers clarity regarding the world's state of consciousness and what is needed for a smooth and easy transition into the 21st century.

Book Description
Enjoy the classic, complete collection of Cicely Mary Barker's original Flower Fairies books in this brand-new edition. This collector's favorite has been redesigned and now features a lavish, eye-catching jacket with silver foil. The interior still includes all of the well-loved illustrations and poems from Barker's eight original books, as well as a selection of fairy rhymes.