Dude.

[greenstorm]

So many flowers in public yesterday.

"Happy plant hysterectomy day"?

"Show her you love her, give her unregulated pesticides from Guatemala"?

Etc, etc. It feels tacky to write anything aboiut child labour. I hadn't thought so many people would honestly buy hothouse roses with all the talk of cynicism on Valentine's day, but there were a lot out there. Ouch. It's such a good arena to make informed choices in, because of all the symbolism. Doing some sort of a flowering potted plant is mostly better, even if it dies like the cut flowers would-- or find something from a local grower.

http://www.laborrights.org/projects/flowers_index.htm

This is not to mention that a lot of the greenery that comes with them (namely the salal, the flat dark green oval leaves with the leathery texture) are harvested from the wild, from places like our wilderness park areas-- there are no significant rules regulating this sort of thing, and areas tend to be stripped clear pretty fast, leading to wildlife trouble (salal is one of our primary berry-bearing plants around BC) and just plain ugliness and disruption.

Next year's topic: fair trade chocolate.

Comments

[d-corvin.livejournal.com]

You will be happy to know I did not buy anyone anything yesterday. I did not injure a plant to symbolize my love for a girl, nor did I support child labor in any way by buying even one gram of chocolate. Instead, I wrote an e-mail. I think it was appreciated more than a flower. ;)

[(Anonymous)]

And some poor child out there desperately trying to support his widowed mother had no money for food. You should be ashamed.

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

Hm, trolls.

[algae-al-fresco.livejournal.com]

we sell nice little silk flowers.....we sold a lot of them too...but I have no idea where they're made. My rose is just starting to put out nice new growth, and I have a gadzillion bulbs coming up...I love spring :)

[cz_unit]

*nod* Makes sense. I have found that the V_day roses are of pretty lousy quality anyway. I prefer to wait till summer and pick a rose from my gardens.

CZ