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Buddhists say yes.

And I've always found tulips to go out with such a glorious, outrageous bang. I hope to go the same way!

Ha, I've always thought that way but felt shameful about it. "Oh, I've been meaning to throw those out," I'll say to company. Little do they know.

Maybe I don't get it, but this just looks like lazy housekeeping to me.

for people into wabi-sabi or the beauty of ruins, dead flowers (to a point) can be beautiful. It goes with liking things old, or shabby, or beat up. The Japanese do observe a distinction between the dinks of age indicating the passage of time and something that's past it's due date.

When they're available I'll pick up a small bouquet of Japanese or Siberian iris. After they've exhausted themselves, they stay in the vase, dry out and become something altogether new and beautiful. I agree: "Feng Shui be damned, we think dead flowers are beautiful."
Frankly the things done in the name of Feng Shui, and the opportunities missed is a shame.

The renowned, late Houston florist Leonard Tharp published a book over 20 years ago that celebrated the flower from bud to seed, and the book is one of my favorites.

I wish I could agree and my flowers lasted longer, but dead flowers make me sad and I just have to throw them away.
But if you like them, keep them and don't worry what others may think.

chairgal, I hope when *you* are "past your prime" no one sweeps you out to the curb in the name of fastidious housekeeping!

No. They're waaaaaay too Miss Havisham for me. I've had a roommate in college who never threw away flowers that guys gave her and by the end of the semester, there would be dead bugs and viscous moldy water in the vases.

Jems, there is a line the Japanese draw between good aesthetics and bad housekeeping.... and I don't think anyone here is planning to cross or redraw it

although i am not a feng shui adherent, when i heard that you're not supposed to have dead flowers or plants around, i felt that that idea really resonated with me. so now whenever i see dead flowers, i can't help but think "bad feng shui" and i don't keep them around.

this is random, but after seeing the dead flowers, my eye went to that little grey thing in the corner of the photo. i thought for a split second that it was a dead mouse.

lala--don't worry, no dead mice chez moi, just a little wire weaving my grandmother gave me!

Wow ... I actually have a beautiful framed colored-pencil drawing of a vase of dying tulips that I bought from an artist many years ago! She did a whole series of drawings of the flowers over a week or so, as they went from fresh to past their prime. She told me that she even resorted to taping some of the fallen petals back on at the end, as she worked frantically to capture that last stage ... and that that last drawing was her favorite.

Peonies? How dare you.

I agree! I love dead flowers. Something about them seemingly collapsing upon themselves is beautiful to me. Right now I have a bouquet of beautiful peruvian lilies that have lost most of their petals, but still remain beautiful and graceful. Even the petals scattered around the base of the vase seems like art.

Death is a part of life, and therefore, beautiful.

I used to hate getting cut flowers as a gift because of their inevitable deaths, but recently (Nov 07) I received a bouquet that included some yellow mums. Eventually the rest of the flower varieties died while the mums kept going, so I finally cut off the flower heads and about six inches of stem and stuck them in a jelly jar with some water. Last weekend I was about to throw out the finally dying 9 week old mum blossoms when I noticed that the six inch stems had ROOTED! Sometimes it really is worth waiting to watch the whole death process -- I'll probably put them in dirt next weekend and see if I can cultivate them into full blown plants...