Flowers insolita Blog

There are many exotic town names in Long Island, especially in Suffolk county, such as Ronkonkoma, Hauppague, etc. Non-Long-Islanders can’t even pronounce them correctly.

If you are a Long Islander, you probably know that these names came from Native Americans’ language. But do you know the meanings?

• Amagansett: “place of good water”
• Aquebogue: “head of bay”
• Commack <- Winnecomac: "pleasent land"
• Copiague: “sheltered harbor”
• Coram <- Winnecoram: "passage between hills or a valley"
• Cutchogue <- Corchaug (?): "principal place"
• Hauppague: “overflowed land”
• Massapequa: “great water land”
• Matinecock: “hill country”
• Mattituck: “great creek”
• Manhasset <- Manhansett: "island neighborhood"
• Montauk: “uncertain”
• Noyack: “a point or corner of land”
• Patchogue <- Pochaug (?): "where a river divides"
• Poquott: “cleared land”
• Quogue <- Quaquanantuck: "cove or estuary"
• Ronkonkoma <- Raconkamuck: "boundary fishing place"
• Setauket: “land at the mouth of creek”
• Speonk: “high place”
• Syosset <- Suwasset (?): "place in the pines"

– References —

Long island history at Newsday

and a lot of Google search.  Please let us know if you find any error or omission.

OK, this has absolutely nothing to do with flowers, but…

Do you watch “The Apprentice” on NBC? You may not like Donald Trump (not many people do), but do you know that four of the Apprentice hopefuls actually have connection to Long Island (one of them was already “fired”)?

Martin “The Philosopher” Clarke, an Atlanta-based attorney, was born in Amityville and graduated from Adelphi University. In the first episode, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter, told him, “I don’t like the way you talk … the way you project yourself…. I feel everything you say is rhetoric…” while he was trying desperately to explain himself out of a tight spot. He was fired.

Marisa “The Politico” De Mato, also an attorney, grew up in Centereach.

Angela “The Olympian” Ruggiero, is a three-time Olympic ice-hockey player and lives in Oyster Bay. Gold medal in 1998; Silver medal in 2002; Bronze medal in 2006. Wow!

Jenn “The Blonde” Hoffman, is a publicist who grew up in Huntington.

Here in Long Island, Canada goose is seen everywhere – park, golf course, parking lot, school yard, and so on. Not everyone likes this large bird (wing span 5-6 feet), because their droppings are proportionally large and they do it whenever and wherever they feel like doing it.

Fortunately to Canada geese, the bird is under Federal protection through the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. This act makes it unlawful to hunt, kill, sell, disturb nests, purchase or possess migratory birds except as permitted by regulations adopted by the Secretary of the Interior.

One local golf course, Cold Spring County Club, is also annoyed by Canada geese who usually hang out around its ponds, pooping all over the place. One day, apparently, the Club managers got this brilliant idea: install fake dogs around the pond to scare the geese off!

Thus a half dozen of scary-looking fake dog, painted black, were placed around the pond (click on the picture to enlarge).

Alas, the geese are loving it! They kind of hang out near the dogs, showing absolutely no sign of being scared (click on the picture to enlarge).

Obviously, Canada goose is smarter than whoever came up with this brilliant idea.

This reminds me of this funny picture of a pigeon sitting right on top of a “fake owl” which supposedly repells pigeons (click on the picture to enlarge).

Realated news in this blog: California weather alert 

It looks really bad. In California, many flowers are grown in outside fields; they can’t take freezing temperatures. According to one grower, this cold snap is the second worst disaster in his 30 years of business (the worst was 1990 when everything was lost).

Some flowers, such as roses, are grown in greenhouses. They are OK, but the heating cost has skyrocketed, pushing up the prices of these flowers on the market.

We expect some serious shortage of California flowers for Valentine’s Day. The shortage of production, combined with an enormous demand for flowers during Valentine Day, means a huge increase in price of California flowers at the grower/wholesaler level.

Most retailers therefore will not be able to afford them. This, in turn, will create an increased demand for South American flowers and roses, resulting in their shortage. On top of that, do you know that Valentine’s Day has become a very popular event in India, a country which just a few years ago, never celebrated Valentine’s day? There will be a world-wide shortage of roses for this year’s Valentine’s Day. Roses will simply run out.

What this means to you, consumers, is this. First, seriously, you better pre-order Valentine’s Day bouquet as early as possible. If you wait until the last moment to order (most customers order on Feb 13th or 14th), chances are that your florist will have already sold out roses. Second, it may be difficult for you to get mixed arrangements. Flowers are just not there in the market, or even if there are, they will be too expensive at the wholesale level for many florists to afford.

We will keep you updated for this ongoing crisis.

As many of you might have heard from TV news, freezing temperatures have decimated Colifornia’s agricultural industries, including flower growers.  The losses are said to exceed one billion dollars.  Governer Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in 10 of the state’s counties.

As the result, some of the common flowers are hard to get right now, because either they are simply non-existent in the market or the prices are too high.  These flowers include: Stock, Snapdragon, Larkspur, Delphinium, Iris, Matsumoto Aster, Waxflower, and Heather.

We are exploring different sources now.  Thank you for your understanding.

Actually “Kiwi” is not a flower.  It’s the name of a fictional bird.  Here’s the story of “Kiwi”:

“Kiwi – a type of bird that cannot fly, who spends its whole life working towards achieving his dream. The kiwi strived to create the illusion that it was flying over a forest as it soared down through the sky from the top of a cliff. Thus, the kiwi spent what must have been its whole life nailing trees to the side of a cliff. All this, to fulfil its one dream of flying, even though it was technically unable to.”

Here’s the video animation of “Kiwi“, voted #1 in YouTube in Animation category. There is a powerful message in this animation.

Roses: Red roses have been practically impossible to get for the last couple of weeks.  Now it’s getting better.

Tulips: Local tulips will become available around the week of the 15th.  The price will go down after that.

Lilies: White oriental lilies (Realto, Casablanca, Siberia, etc) are very expensive now in Dutch auction.  We are getting South American lilies instead, which tend to be a little smaller than those from Holland.

Novelties: Large Sunflowers will become available next week.  Larkspur is in short supply.

Here’s a video of Annual Orchid Show 2006. The video is a little bid too long, but some of the Orchids displayed are very interesting.
Here’s an unusual Thai education TV program featuring a florist. The flowers they are selling appear to be common flowers (carns, mums, etc). I wonder where they are getting these flowers from. It could be that most of them are domestically grown.