My Thoughts: Buy Yourself Flowers, Now.

"So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers."

- extract from Comes the Dawn by Veronica Shoffstall

Why you should buy yourself flowers

Flowers make humans happy. And for me personally, this fact has got very little to do with the role they play in romantic courtship and woo-ing.

Flowers brighten a room. They add fragrance to a corner. They bring life and colour and a conversation topic. I feel happy when I look in the window of a house and see a bouquet of flowers on someone's window sill. When I have a vase full sat in the middle of my own dining table, I am much more likely to smile than if they weren't there. I'm so convinced by the soothing and heeling properties of flowers that I wrote a short story about it.

Here, in Amsterdam, it's almost impossible to walk for more than a minute in any direction and not see someone with one or several bunches of flowers attached to the back of their bike, or balanced in one hand as they cycle along. (By the way, as far as Dutch-people-carrying-things-on-bikes goes, this is nothing. I've seen people happily riding bikes while balancing step-ladders, mirrors, metal pipes and Christmas trees in one arm.) I don't think any other city has as many flower shops per capita as Amsterdam does - though I'd happily be proved wrong - and even in my local Albert Heijn supermarket, which is relatively small as supermarkets go, there's a display stretching out across more than twelve metres, dedicated solely to flowers. We're lucky, this is a country renowned for growing flowers so seasonal bunches and bouquets are all relatively affordable and accessible. I know it's not the same for others in other parts of the world

What the Dutch have taught me about flowers

I've come to the conclusion that with so many flowers and such an active market for them, Dutch men and women do not wait for their partners or friends or family or acquaintances to buy them for them. That's not to say this isn't a thing, it is. Flowers are a lovely wait to say "thank you" or "congratulations" over here, but it's not the main reason flowers are bought over here. Dutch people buy flowers for themselves. Bunches and bunches of them, week after week after week.

It must be catching because I've also started to do the same. I feel our house is bare when there are no fresh flowers in them. I own more vases than I ever have (not hard considering I don't think I'd ever owned one) and I can tell which seasons are just around the corner according to the flowers that start to fill the buckets outside flower shops. (I always get excited when I see tulips because it means spring is on its way, and peonies will always signal the first scent of summer.)

I started to document the flowers I bought and enjoyed on Instagram and used the hashtag #birdiesflowers to look back on the bouquets I'd bought myself over the weeks and months.

And yet these flowers are not just for me. They are for my family. They are for our friends who visit. They are for our neighbours who often gaze on me working by the window in our dining room where behind me a vase of flowers often sits. They are for the passers-by who can see into our house and when they do catch a hint of colour.

Last week, NewMan surprised me with a couple of bunches of tulips. It was the first time he'd bought me flowers since, well, we lived in London. I assumed that now I'd regularly started to buy them for myself he'd no longer see the need for him to do so. I also thought that if I always had flowers in the house, why would it feel special when he brought them instead of me?

I'm happy to say, it ALWAYS feels special when someone buys you flowers. Maybe even more special because he still felt the urge to do so after I'd made it my own domain for so long.

So buy yourself flowers. You won't stop anyone else doing it for you and it won't feel any less special when they do. In the meantime, you will have beautiful, colourful, joyful flowers making you smile and anyone else lucky enough to see them.

Frances M. Thompson

Londoner turned wanderer, Frankie is an author, freelance writer and blogger. Currently based in Amsterdam, Frankie was nomadic for two years before starting a family with her Australian partner. Frankie is the author of three short story collections, and is a freelance writer for travel and creative brands. In 2017, she launched WriteNOW Cards, affirmation cards for writers that help build a productive and positive writing practice. When not writing contemporary fiction, Frankie shops for vintage clothes, dances to 70s disco music and chases her two young sons around Amsterdam.
Find Frankie on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+.

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