Posted on

THANKSGIVING DAY – A Time To Be Grateful And Share Love & Warmth

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Thanksgiving Centerpiece

“The first Thanksgiving” as it is popularly referred to took place over the time period of three days in 1621 at the Plymouth Colony in what is now Massachusetts. A year earlier, in 1620, a ship named the Mayflower, from Plymouth, England, arrived near present day Cape Cod, Massachusetts carrying mostly a group of religious separatists referred to as the Pilgrims. While they worked on establishing a village at Plymouth, the majority of the colonists remained on the Mayflower during the first winter, which was a harsh one.

In the spring of 1621, the remaining settlers moved ashore and befriended a Native American named Squanto of the Patuxet tribe. Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate corn, catch eel and fish, and acted as an interpreter between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people. In November of 1621, the governor of Plymouth, William Bradford, arranged for a celebratory feast and invited many Native Americans.

The first Thanksgiving menu consisted of wild fowl (ducks, geese, and turkey), fish (cod, eel, and bass), shellfish, venison, fruits and berries, vegetables (beetroot, peas, beans, maize, squash, and pumpkin), and grains. For the following three days the Pilgrims feasted and entertained their Native American friends.

Although the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth is widely credited as being the origin of the modern Thanksgiving tradition, other ceremonies of giving thanks are known to have occurred prior.

In 1863 through the proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln Thanksgiving became an official U.S holiday. President Lincoln originally designated the fourth Thursday of November as the Thanksgiving celebration date, where it has remained since.

                                                      

Thanksgiving is a time to decorate homes with wreaths, centerpieces and fresh flowers. Every Fall during Thanksgiving, people beautify their homes with vibrant floral decorations which give the interiors a whole new look and feel. They light lamps to brighten the ambiance and dinner tables are adorned with the best china and antique silver cutlery to mark the occasion.

Thanksgiving is also a time for lavish family dinners and get to-gethers and hence the perfect occasion for sending loving messages and heartwarming gifts to relatives, colleagues at work place, superiors and subordinates and near and dear ones. Amongst other things, gifting holds a special significance on this day and you can convey your heartfelt feelings and express your gratitude through Thanksgiving flowers, cards and gifts.

This Thanksgiving, you can do something special for your loved ones. You can send them delectable hampers containing assorted goodies, enticing cakes or stunning floral ensembles as a loving gesture to show your gratitude. Your friends and family will surely appreciate the love and affection showered through these unique and exquisite gifts. These flowers and gifts will be remembered by all even after Thanksgiving has passed.

Thanksgiving is for gifting and whether you’re staying in Canada or North America or any part of the world, you can easily send across gifts and warm wishes through online gifting, along with loads of love and affection. Send Thanksgiving flowers and gifts to your loved ones.

                                                                        

Thanksgiving is celebrated as first Monday of October in Canada and fourth Thursday of November in United States. In 2012 it will be celebrated on 22nd November in United States where as in 2013, 28th November will be Thanksgiving Day.

Links:

– Send Thanksgiving Flowers to U.S.A.

– Send Thanksgiving Flowers to U.K.

– Send Thanksgiving Flowers to Philippines

– Send Thanksgiving Flowers to Germany

– Send Thanksgiving Flowers to Italy

– Send Thanksgiving Flowers to France

– Send Thanksgiving Flowers to Australia

 

Posted on

Unique Flowers From Across The Globe

Across the world, since time immemorial the beauty and uniqueness of flowers has been glorified in many traditions, beliefs, poems as well as stories. Flowers have always blessed life on earth and have taken on an amazing variety of shapes, colors and scents in their efforts to attract the creatures they need to complete pollination and produce seeds for the next generation.

There are currently 235,000 known species of flowers in the world, and more are discovered every year. More than 60 percent of these grow in the warm, wet climate of tropical rainforests. Some tropical flowers go to extremes in size, odor and survival strategies. Most of these couldn’t survive in a suburban garden, and you probably wouldn’t want them to.

 Appealing to human sensibilities isn’t foremost in the reproductive struggle of these unique and intriguing flowers. You probably won’t be able to cultivate these species in your lawn but here’s a look at some of the world’s most unique and beautiful flowers across the globe.

 KING PROTEA

The King Protea is the National Flower of  South Africa and as such provides the name to the National Cricket team,  whose nickname is the ‘Proteas’. It also is the flagship of The Protea Atlas Project, run by the South African National Botanical Institute.  The King Protea has several color forms and horticulturists have recognized 81 garden varieties, some of which have carelessly been planted in its natural range. In some variants the pink of the flower and red borders of leaves are substituted by a creamy yellow. This unusual flower lasts for long and is used in decorative flower arrangements. It also makes for an excellent dried flower.

 

 

WARATAH

  The name Waratah comes from the Eora Aboriginal people, the original inhabitants of the Sydney area. It is native to the southeastern parts of Australia – New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. The Waratah belongs to the Proteaceae, a family of flowering plants found in the Southern Hemisphere. They prefer sandy loam soils and are a pyrogenic flowering species, meaning that they rely on post-fire flowering followed by production and dispersal of non-dormant seeds to take advantage of favorable growing conditions in the altered environment following a fire. The most well-known species in this genus is Telopea speciosissima, which has bright red flowers and is the New South Wales state emblem.

PASSION VINE 

Passion vines, known also as the passion flowers, is a part of about 500 

species of flowering plants, the namesakes of the family Passifloraceae. Passion flowers have always been very popular, and many hybrids were created using the Winged-stem Passion Flower and the Blue Passion Flower and other tropical species during the Victorian era.  A number of species of Passiflora are cultivated outside their natural range because of their beautiful flowers and many cool-growing Passiflora from the Andes Mountains can be grown successfully for their beautiful flowers and fruit in cooler Mediterranean climates, such as the Monterey Bay and San Francisco in California.

 

INDIAN BEET

 Indian Beet also known as Sundial Lupine is part of the Fabaceae family. It is widespread in the USA (from Florida to Maine), Canada, and on the coasts of the Arctic Ocean, where it grows on sand hills. The flowers can range from blue to pink, but are most often blue or bluish purple. The Sundial Lupin is used as food plants by the caterpillars of several Lepidoptera. Among these are the Frosted Elfin and the rare and Karner Blue, whose caterpillars feed only on Sundial Lupine leaves. Sundial lupine has been declining in number and range since the Industrial Revolution due to habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, and poor management. Human development has eliminated a large portion of its viable habitat and the remaining habitat is often fragmented, which is problematic for the lupine because it limits the range over which it can reproduce.

 

 

 

 Links:

– Send Flowers to U.S.A.

– Send Flowers to U.K.

– Send Flowers to Philippines

– Send Flowers to Germany

– Send Flowers to China

– Send Flowers to Australia