The answer has to be active
the flowering period of a plant, from the opening of the flower bud.
My only real complaint about Susan K. Harris's The Courtship of Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain is that it is mistitled: the present title trivializes the accomplishments of this book. A more appropriate title would be something like Negotiating Differences in Victorian America: Olivia Langdon, Sam Clemens, and Reading Relationships or The Rhetoric of Love: How Olivia Langdon and Sam Clemens Became Mr. and Mrs. Clemens. I don't know. It just seems that what the author has accomplished in this small volume deserves a better title, at least one with a colon.
