Today’s Truthful Tuesday question is another on the theme of Valentines Day. Di is our acting host while PCGuyIV takes a break.

Do you think the hike in prices for flowers, especially red roses,  as we near Valentine’s Day is warranted?

It would be very easy to answer yes to this question and I might have had I not first read Fandango’s response. As well explaining how the laws of supply and demand worked he pointed out what was involved for people in the flower industry to manage the increased demand for flowers, especially roses, for Valentine’s day. If you haven’t already I suggest you go and take a look at his post.

I guess that most of us don’t think very much about flowers and how they grow, especially if we don’t have gardens. Not far from where we live there are several commercial flower farms. One of them, Table Cape Tulip Farm, just outside of Wynyard is open to the public for about a month every year when the tulips are blooming. The farm is a commercial bulb farm and when the tulips have bloomed they dehead them and harvest the bulbs. They send bulbs to Holland, that’s pretty cool.

When I started to volunteer at the Visitor Centre in Wynyard I was surprised to learn that many tourists come to the town expecting that there will be tulips in bloom all year round. Some get quite cross when told that they only bloom for a month, from late September to late October roughly. The town’s tourism brochures feature tulips of course so I suppose this makes many people believe that there are always tulips. I learned at quite a young age that daffodils, tulips, and certain other bulbs only bloom in spring. I thought it was common knowledge but I guess it is not.

I know that has nothing to do with roses or Valentines Day but my point is that there is often a good reason when prices rise, it’s not always price gouging although there is a heck of a lot of that too.

As for roses, thanks to our resident pademelons we’re going through another summer without roses on our bushes. They were just about to bloom when they were eaten and by the time the bushes recover it will likely be too late for flowers. I might add that these bushes are in pots on our deck up a ramp. We thought they would be safe just outside the back door. We were wrong.

As I mentioned the other day, I am not really bothered about Valentines Day. I never really was, even when David was alive. However, I do love to get flowers. But I’d be just as happy with a bunch of flowers from the garden or a roadside stall at any time of year than an expensive single red rose on Valentines Day. Actually, where flowers are concerned I’d say more is better. Give me a bunch of mixed flowers that look cheerful in the living room or a pot of living flowers and don’t worry about the romantic gesture.