Roses as Rorschach tests - which bouquet would you take home?
HI folks
I know that even the original Rorschach tests (you know, what do you see in this ink blot) don't really tell very much about people's personalities but I had some fun recently with making bouquets for an occasion at work and seeing who liked which arrangements the best. We had a dear sweet lady donate money many years ago to create a computer facilitated classroom where students could learn more actively across a variety of classes. Every year we'd host her a birthday party in the classroom and invite all the students and faculty, as well as her family, and I was in charge of making homemade bouquets from collected flowers by everyone at work. At the time I was just a regular gardener and hadn't really gotten into roses yet, which tells you how long ago that was.
Since then, her family has continued to support the classroom and share their sincere joy in helping update things, so we hosted another party in honor of everyone in the family, particularly her daughter who has followed what we do and gotten enthusiastic about the process as well. Again, we invited everyone in the building to bring flowers but it's a hard time of year to do this in late September in zone 5, so given that I brought a lot of the flowers it had a clear rose theme. I stripped literally every rose from my garden as well as a lot of foliage plants and other fillers, and decided to do different "personalities" of the bouquets for fun.
Here are the buckets 'o blooms that I had cut from my garden, which given that I have 1000+ roses and plenty of other plants tells you how meager things are by this time of year in zone 5 Nebraska. Many of you in warmer zones could get this many blooms from just a couple of bushes, but this is literally everything but the minis and the teeny landscape roses:
To amuse myself in the several hours it took to arrange things, I took to naming the bouquets and assigning them personality in my imagination (not real of course). I thought you might have fun with the same process and see which bouquets suit your style. For an extra challenge, think about which one a lady older than me would take home for her choice, and you can analyze me to guess which one I'd take home.
Being the beginnings of fall here in Nebraska (meaning mums and asters are starting), I called this one "Seasons in the Sun", with high contrast colors but overall harmony. Oh, BTW ignore the more than slightly green water. I ran to the vending machines at work for 7-UP to put in the water to keep them nice, but all they had was Mountain Dew and I forgot it was green colored till too late:
Speaking of contrast, this one used more of the modern picotee and vivid roses so I consider it the "Neon Lights of Broadway", with the pink Gaura standing in for the Rockettes.
For the more subtle approach, well as subtle as I get, I put a lot of pastel colors together and kept things relatively muted for the "Pastel Princess" bouquet. Even so, I couldn't resist a few neon highlights here and there.
This one is more color coordinated than some of the bouquets, and goes in my head as "Apricot Galore", with the many faces of apricot and orange highlighted.
Given that I still had a lot of vivid flowers to use - hey, I like saturated colors in my roses - I decided to combine a lot of them together in the "Ow My Eyes Hurt!" bouquet. When I brought in the bucket, the one rose that immediately drew everyone's attention among the many dozens of blooms is the multilayered neon of Milestone at the center of this bouquet.
This next one pays tribute to the Princess Bride, one of my favorite movies celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, so these almost unrelieved gloomy colors (except for the lovely Heart 'n Soul to lighten things up) goes by "The Pit...of DESPAIR".
You'd think that the next bouquet was the leftovers that didn't fit anywhere else, but I actually planned an "Oddballs" bouquet, highlighted by the indescribably beautiful dark stripes of Abracadabra that has finally after 3 years decided it likes my yard:
My colleagues brought in a decidedly different and lovely style of flowers, so I kept them together for the most part with some additions from me. This one was a complete bouquet from a friend that I call "Prairie Harvest Time".
The last made use of some genuinely huge sunflowers that someone else brought in, and it demanded loudly (in my head) to be named "Big Bertha". This used the largest vase we had and was easily 3' tall at its peak. The top view I took doesn't quite capture her in her full glory, but you get the idea.
So enjoy the bouquets, and if you feel like playing along my questions would be (for fun only, of course - none of this really means anything):
Which bouquet would you take home?
Which one did the primary lady being honored take home (honorable mention for bouquets her other 3 family members took home)
Which one would I most want to take home?
Just curious what you'd think!
Cynthia
Comments (38)
nippstress - zone 5 Nebraska
6 years agoTo see the bouquets in their context, here are a few shots of them around the computer classroom. We put a few of the medium sized bouquets around the cake and punch, and the more modest sized ones on the tables. The computer display screen at the back happens to be highlighting some of my research in this shot and I'm in the photo. No, not the cute one in the middle - I'm off to the right of the photo.
The bigger bouquets lined the computer tables with Big Bertha taking the honors at the instructor's table.
All that stripping of the roses means I've had next to no deadheading to do for the last two weeks, and only a few of the roses have recovered to condescend to bloom again. Ah well, it's time to get planting bulbs anyway so rose season is basically over all but the shoutin' in these parts.Have fun
Cynthia
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