BEWARE OF THE FLOWERS 'COS YOU KNOW THEY'RE GONNA GET YOU, YEAH!

As you know, five years ago this week my father died. Graham and I had been at a meeting with the nurse in charge of his case at Barnstaple hospital, and because she said that Dad was stable we came home so I could get a rest, but I was only home long enough to have a cup of tea and a cigarette (I still smoked back in those halcyon days) when the hospital telephoned told us to get back to Barnstaple immediately.



The garden was grey and dead.



The next morning was Valentine's Day, and when we returned home following my Father's death, I was amazed to see that the flowers had all come out.


Ever since then I have noted that the week of Valentine's Day is the week that all the flowers start to emerge, and as I have written elsewhere, it got me thinking.



Could Valentine's Day, like so many other Christian festivals, merely have co-opted an earlier Pagan fertility festival, marking the day that all the flowers began to come out, and winter began to end?