Flowers are fated to carry out several functions in our lives: gifts, communicative (who, after all, has never solved at least one conflict in their lives with the help of flowers?), medicinal, and, of course, aesthetic. Psychologists have even thought up an entire theory about how a person’s preferences with regard to flowers can tell us about their character and emotional condition more accurately than other indicators. Further, they add to the line of the factors their ability to render psychotherapeutic influence, in particular in the treatment of depression. Recently one more factor has been added to this long list: flowers have become a means of survival.
Unquestionably the flower business in its classical understanding is a labor-intensive business that demands a capital investment not insignificant. This apparently explains its unpopularity in Ukraine in comparison with other countries, although a fruit and vegetable growing business can cover its set up costs in just 4-5 years, and so-called green psychotherapy can bring a profit in a year. But for the moment business in this area still mostly consists of seasonal moonlighting, which proves to be especially profitable during the flowering of the lilies of the valley. Unlike, for example, snowdrops, which because of the activity of flower lovers have come to move 100 kilometers from capital, lilies of the valley, say ecologists, still endure. They do not, however, rule out the possibility that they will soon start to migrate from the human eye. Until this happens, however, metro stations and other public places will continue to be adorned by sellers of lilies of the valley of all sizes.
Anna Ivanivna Yermolenko, for example, tells of how all of her financial hopes depend on the month of May and that all planned purchases are postponed until afterwards. With her salary as a school janitor of 135 hryvnias it is necessary for her to figure out how, in spite of this, to scrimp and save so as to also help her children. The lily season brings her in up to a hundred hryvnias per day, and on successful days even 150, although, admittedly, she achieves this through sweat and blood. After her work at the school, Anna Ivanivna goes to the wood with a friend in the evening, praying each time that the trip will not be her last, and collects lilies of the valley until it gets dark. The actual process of selling is not without its problems either. Local vagrants occasionally like to run rackets, insisting that 50% of the profits go into their pockets. There are also, of course, encounters with the police, but as a whole, says Anna Ivanivna , “Anything can be endured for that kind of money.”
Simultaneously, the director of the Kyiv Ecological Cultural center, Volodymyr Boreiko, considers it necessary to combat such trade, as otherwise even lilies of the valley could end up in the Red Book of extinct species. But, in his opinion, this does not mean, that it is necessary to eschew aesthetic pleasure for the sake of ecology. The ecology expert considers that its worth is in at least starting the active cultivation of farmed lilies, as they have done in the Baltic states, which are equally simple and beautiful.
The French on the other hand associate these flowers with the tiny lamps of forest dwarfs and even have an annual festival in their honor where each year they sing hymns to lilies of the valley.
