A few months ago I read Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s novel
The Language of Flowers. I was entranced. Emotionally dark in many places, the light and grace of the floral communication kept me clinging to the story. All is not a “rose garden” in the end, but the novel scattered many seeds of thought. To express the book in florigraphy, I would carry a tussie-mussie, a word posy, of an outer ring of vetch, a ring of pansies, coriander sprinkled throughout, and a clematis in the center. To translate:
clinging to the thoughts of hidden worth of mental beauty. Close enough—florigraphy, the study of flower meaning, is not an exact science, nor was it intended to describe a book.
