Nuts and Bolts: say it with flowers.

One of the great things about words is that you can carry literally thousands of them around with you wherever you go and access most of them instantly.

I have to admit, though, that the spoken word can fail people at moments of great emotion. Few of us, for example, can speak coherently to someone we really really fancy, at least at the beginning.

One of the most pleasingly bonkers of ways to help with this is the language of flowers.

If you want to console someone, for instance, you send them a bunch of snowdrops. (Here in England that will involve about a seven month wait until they come into flower, but, hey, better late than never.)

If you really feel passionate about someone then you go with the red roses. If you quite fancy someone but can't help noticing they have fat arms, for example, then pink roses would be more appropriate.

If you send red and white roses together then that means united, as the inhabitants of Manchester already know very well indeed.

It can be a bit dodgy, though. I could easily enough send a message of thanks with the agrimony which grows as a weed in my garden, but I'm not sure if anyone receiving a bunch of weeds would get quite the right message.

Ah well. It does make you realise how truly wonderful words are.

Word To Use Today: flower. This word is from the Old French flor and before that the Latin flōs.