Yellow Snapdragon

As a young girl, my mother used to send me to stay with her mother from time to time when my grandfather would go to visit his relatives. She always had a few things for me to play with: a small chalkboard to write on and a hula hoop that I loved since we didn't have one at home. I would stand in her backyard and play with that thing twirling and twirling first around my waist, then my legs and arms and if I was adventurous maybe around my neck. When I tired of that, I would take the hula hoop and use it like a big round jump rope and roam around the backyard. I loved my grandmother's backyard. She grew vegetables and flowers in it. One of my favorite flowers that she grew every year were snapdragons. We didn't have anything like it growing in our yard, and I absolutely loved to pick off an individual bloom and make it look like a roaring lion! Each flower has a throat that looks just like a mouth with a tongue and the way the flower blooms the rest of it looks like a lion's mane. Every time I went to her house I would while a way time playing out fantasies with those flower lions.

Snapdragons are used at the flower shop, but mainly in funeral arrangements. Their long tall stalks are perfect for giving height to any arrangement and they are a great substitution for people who don't like gladiolas. Working with people who come in to make arrangements for funerals is a tough position to be in on a daily basis. There are people who call in who are crying and it is hard to know what to say to them sometimes. I just tell them to take their time. You commiserate with them, but you get off them phone just a little down. It's even harder when they come in person to the shop. I like it when they tell you about the person who died. It makes it just a little more personal when you are making the flowers for them. The hidden meaning behind snapdragons is not a very nice one. They can mean deception or concealment, but they also have another meaning, one of graciousness. I will always be grateful for the time I had with my grandmother, and the time I spent in her garden.