Valentine’s day is fast approaching and preparations are well under way, with stacks of boxes waiting to be filled with wonderfully romantic gifts. Our new Valentine specials are up and are going down well, we’ve already had some orders for the cool single rose treats.

Now that InterRose.co.uk supplies the whole of the UK with a shower of wonderful Valentine’s Day gifts every year, people often forget its marvellous history:

1. Jack Valentine

This is a rather strange tradition from Norfolk. This basically involves a father christmas type figure leaving presents for both children and adults. There was also sometimes an opposite character who would play pranks on someone, often by teasing them with a present and then snatching it away. We wouldn’t advise reviving this tradition with your Valentine, we know our gifts are tempting but you need to resist the urge to keep them for yourself!

2. The Night of Sevens

This is an old Chinese celebration similar to Valentine’s day which occurs on a day when it is said that two stars usually separated by the milky way cross this ‘river’ and meet. It seems that it to involved girls practising ‘domestic arts’ in the hope of finding a good husband so it’s no wonder it has changed a bit in modern times.

3. Friends day

Some countries (including finland) use the day for the celebration of friendship more than romantic love, so there are a few places in the world where you could get away with watching the [insert favourite sport here] come the fourteenth. Whether you are celebrating friends or a partner, they are sure to appreciate it if you win our valentine’s day competition by simply telling us what you think “T.R.R.S.” should stand for.

4. Lupercalia

This was an ancient pagan Roman festival of fertility, celebrating the mythical she wolf which mothered Romulus and Remus; the former being the founder of Rome in legend. This festival occurred on the thirteenth to fifteenth of February, overlapping the later celebration of valentine’s day. It also involved slapping people with blood covered strips of sacrificed goat hide though so things have changed a bit.

5. Courtly love

It is widely accepted that the association of Valentine’s day with romantic love began in the middle ages with the idea of courtly love where men and women were supposed to show subtle admiration for each other while staying ‘just friends’,  but often ended up leading to more ;p. Before this it is likely to have been a more general celebration of all kinds of love, including family.

6. Mail

In the eighteen hundreds the way Valentine’s cards and gifts were given changed and people began sending them by mail, beginning the trend of sending them anonymously (as well as, shall we say, less reserved messages).

7. Red roses

Roses have long been symbolic of love, with various cultures using them at weddings and other events.

Originally the white rose was used as the symbol of (particularly new) love as it symbolised purity and innocence which were expected at the time. Various legends from around Europe in particular involve roses changing between white and red, with red representing passion, possibly inspired by blushing. The red rose became more popular when people began to secretively give them as gifts, allowing them to use a colour with a less subtle message.

8. Saint Valentine

This is a bit of a mysterious one as no-one actually knows for sure who he was. There are actually records of three saints named Valentine associated with the date of February the fourteenth, maybe they are really a trio of romantic superheroes!

All we know for sure is that the legend involves a man defying the will of an emperor and risking (well… receiving) death to marry young couples. You might not be willing to go that far to be romantic this valentines day but I’m sure your Valentine won’t hold it against you, and will find an “I Love You”  balloon just as thoughtful.

9. Valentine cards

Originally, Valentine greetings often took the form of a spoken message or a gift but some time after fourteen hundred written messages began to appear. These eventually gave way to elaborate cards with lace and ribbons, often having a personal message added to the inside.

10. Electronic valentines

Want to send someone a gift this Valentine’s day but don’t want to ruin the surprise by suspiciously asking for their address just before? You could always send virtual roses completely free! Embrace the future and enter the matrix.

This post is titled “about blooming time” because it’s about blooming time we decided upon the winner of our “I Love Eros Day because…..” competition.

It’s been nearly 3 months since August the 14th and all of the Rockmantic Godsarians of Love (AKA all the staff of The Red Rose Society) have sufficiently recovered enough from our annual Eros Day bash (Except for Zeus that is, who still has a sore head) to pick the winner of our wonderfully exciting, romantic, original and sweet Eros Day 2011 competition.

However before we announce the winner please allow us to say a really big THANK YOU to each and every one of you who entered this year, unfortunately there can only be one winner and…. Drums Rolls please…… It’s the very lucky and lovely Gail Lowery, who won despite a few tantrums and thunder bolts being thrown out of the aforementioned pram of Zeus.

Gail won because her acronyminal (is that a word?) entry nailed the very essence and meaning of Eros Day for us with her blooming better late than never winning entry below:

I Love Eros Day Because… its Exciting Romantic Original & Sweet!!!!

Thankyou Gail, you have won a tantalisingly wonderful year of gifts and don’t forget like Psyche herself you are in our eyes immortalized forever and it goes without saying of course but you are invited and your +1 to all our future Eros Day bashes on the 14th of August on top of Mount Olympus every year… See you there… if you a dare!!!

Anyway that’s all folks, our Eros Day 2011 competition is officially over for another year, long live our Valentines Day 2012 competition.

Before we announce the winner we must say a big thank you to everyone who entered the competition, to see a full list of entries please click here.

And a further big thank you to everyone who helped us in our hour of need by commenting on our post The Red Rose Society Needs You!

OK with all the thank you’s out of the way all that’s left for us to do is announce who the winner of our Big Valentines Day 2011 twitter friendly “My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose because…” competition is :-

The lovely & glowing Charmaine Brown

Here is her sweetly played entry in all it’s glory  :-

My Love is like a Red, Red Rose,
Sweet and lovely and it shows
Why he loves me no one knows
But Im the one who truly glows
Just like a Red, Red Rose!

Thanks for reading and if you would like to enter our next competition to celebrate Eros Day on August the 14th 2011 please click here.

So to help us pick the winner of our Valentines Day 2011 “My love is like a Red, Red Rose because…” twitter friendly competition we are asking you to choose your favourite from our top 10 and post a comment.

The entry with the most favourable comments on this page wins our fabulous 1st prize of a “Lifetime of Roses”

The top 10 entries to pick from are :-

Entry 1… My Love is like a Red, Red Rose… He’s short and plump with not much hair But he’s fragrant and generous with the love we share!

Entry 2… My Love is like a Red, Red Rose… it’s deep colour is the depth of my love & even in death it’s beauty and memory is eternal as a pressed flower.

Entry 3… My Love is like a Red, Red Rose… ‘for it grows and then blossoms, like pent up emotions unfroze,it heightens my senses , and pours scorn on mere prose!.’

Entry 4… My Love is like a Red, Red Rose… You are my darling tweetie pie. I know I,m not that good at prose, But I’ll love you till the day I die.

Entry 5… My Love is like a Red, Red Rose…
Sweet and lovely and it shows
Why he loves me no one knows
But Im the one who truly glows
Just like a red red rose

Entry 6… My Love is like a Red, Red Rose…
a joy to see it blossom,
but the greatest pleasure of all,
is cuddling up with ‘my little possum’

Entry 7… My Love is like a Red, Red Rose…
with scent as sweet as candy
But everyone around us knows
its not just cos we’re randy!

Entry 8… My Love is like a Red, Red Rose…
Mostly gentle I suppose,
Sometimes prickly, often soft,
Beautifully formed with a little waft

Entry 9… My Love is like a Red, Red Rose…
A gorgeous thing of beauty.
Just be careful how you treat it…
It might go droopy!

Entry 10… My Love is like a Red, Red Rose…
Because like the Red Rose Society,
my love in prose,
blossoms like a red red rose.

We intend to wait a few weeks and see what comments we get and then we promise a winner will be choosen…. At last

In the mean time however if you want to enter our next competition to celebrate Eros Day on August the 14th 2011 please click here.

It’s February the 14th 2011 and there is just enough time to for me to say Happy Valentines Day to ya’all and to thank everyone for entering our wonderful  twitter friendly  Valentines Day competition at http://blog.TRRS.org/twitter-competition.

We will be anouncing the winner in a week or so as soon as we get a few moment to ourselves. 

That said, today of all days is not one of those few moments and I can hear the gentle sobs of our blooming wonderful and hard working staff in the distance as they are handed a whole lot more orders to process!!!

So before I join them with armfuls of more roses we hope whatever your doing today (the most romantic or should that be stressful day of the year) believe in a thing called Love and Romance when your doing it OK!

TTFN… x

It’s January the 25th and that can only mean it’s Burns night….

He like us loved his roses and he like us particularly loved red roses,hence his immortalized poem “My Love is like a Red Red Rose” is our most favourite poem.

Infact our love for Robert Burns or as we like top call him Rabbie Burns is so much we have even performed our very own version of “My Love is Like a Red Red Rose” and have named a Red Rose and even asked everyone in our 2011 Valentines Day twitter friendly competition why their love is like a red red rose in his honour.

Check all three of our dedications to Robert Burns below :-

 http://www.TRRS.org/rose_garden/the_Robert-Burns-Red-Red_rose.html  

http://blog.TRRS.org/my-love-is-like-a-red-red-rose.html

 http://blog.TRRS.org/twitter-competition

To download our song please right click on this link and save it to your hard drive otherwise just click the play arrow and enjoy our version of “My Love is Like a Red Red Rose” which we are proud to say is unlike any version you will ever hear again!

Happy Burns Night everyone and may your love be like a Red Red Rose forever @->–

To kick start our new and improved rose blog in 2011 the way we mean to go on we firstly need to start with a massive apology to all our red rose blog members for not keeping our rose blog up-to-date. Infact the last blog post we did was to tell you about our Eros Day competwittion winner way back on August the 14th

The reasons are numerous, but boil down to the single thing we lack the most of all and that is time. However we have employed several new staff this year and we are all set for a wonderful 2011 with room to grow our rose business and rose blog into the blooming lovely budding rose it deserves to be!

So with that said… You can’t start a new year off with out a few new years roselutions (Do you like the way we twisted the word resolution and included a rose in it ) so here goes…

• Nurture our Rose Blog
• Grow our Rose Blog
• Water or Rose Blog
• Propagate our Rose Blog
• Bloom our Rose Blog
• Flourish our Rose Blog
• Sow our Rose Blog
• Prune our Rose Blog
• Blossom our Rose Blog

Hope you get the idea It’s all about the Bog and the Roses… Till our next post… keep believing in a thing called Roses everyone!!!

Tracy Jewkes

Her twitter name is @rockystar and we choose her entry above all others because hers explanation was simple yet perfectly formed and she was the only one (except our own entries) to include a smiley face at the end

Trays entry is as follows :-

Love is… All I Need

We know your going to enjoy your lifetime of roses

The picture below is a close up of just one of the Luxury Bouquets we sent. This particular one had a rainbow mix of all our roses and oodles of gyp! (Not everyone wants just red roses on Valentines Day you know)

So that’s it for another year (or 6 months if you count http://www.ErosDay.com) and to those who still haven’t sent a rose to their Valentine your  leaving it blooming late but don’t worry you can send one of our FREE virtual roses over at http://www.VirtualRoses.co.uk.

P.S. Did you hear us being interviewed by BBC Radio Suffolk yesterday? A great laugh was had byall! Especially all the staff who crowded around the radio enjoying our brief moment of fame!

P.P.S. Almost forgot to say our Valentines Day twitter friendly http://www.AThingCalledLove.org competwittion is still open and taking entries until midnight tonight!

We have been totally original and called it The Red Rose Florist

If you want to order flowers and balloons for all occasions with same day delivery throughout Lowestoft just call 01502 518555 and let one of our friendly and professional trained florists take care of you!

As you know from my earlier blog posts I’ve been working here a few months now and it still amazes me that some people who come into our HQ think we only sell balloons.  Well now I think they’ll cotton on as we unveil our beautiful new shopfront.

It’s a project that’s been in the pipeline for a while now ever since we acquired our next door neigbours property and to be honest, we’re ecstatic that it’s finally here.

Customers can now come in and have a walk around selecting the flowers they want and have a bit of a ‘natter’ with the staff. You never know if you’re really lucky you might get a cup of tea as well, how’s that?

P.S. We promise to upload some more pictures soon… Especially at night as it looks lovely!