When Valentine's Day dawned, loved ones everywhere reveled in candy, flowers and flowery notes.

But sweet signs of love in action can turn up any day and linger in the heart for a lifetime.

So said USA Today readers who were asked to share tales of romantic gestures in their lives.

Inventive marriage proposals were among the many highlights in more than 200 e-mails and letters:

Jeff Cole of Ladera Ranch, Calif., sent his grad-school girlfriend a map in an unmarked mailer. It sent her hunting along Crescent Beach.

"Jill unearthed a small treasure chest buried exactly where the 'X' on the worn parchment suggested. As I knelt down to watch Jill open the chest, I could see the amazed look on her face when she discovered a sparkling diamond ring inside. It was then, during a spectacular Pacific sunset, that Jill agreed to marry me."

Eleven years and two children later, Cole still recalls how "leaving a 1-carat diamond in the sand on a public beach made me a bit nervous!"

Susan Mayfield Hunnicutt of Charleston, S.C., fell for a sky diver. She decided to surprise him by trying his free-falling hobby just once. She would train, she thought, in secret.

She jumped, and "imagine my shock when Lee (Hunnicutt) dropped down in front of me, almost 2 miles above the Earth, holding a banner that said 'WILL YOU MARRY ME?' Multiple fist pumps and thumbs up answered him and, as I landed, he met me on bended knee with a diamond ring and champagne."

LOVE NOTES RULE

Still, the top score on the romance meter, cited by 23 percent of respondents, goes to love notes. Notes hidden in the house, the hotel, the luggage or the lunchbox. Notes with poems. And at least one love note, writ large, that backfired.

Tracy Shoemaker of Livonia, Mich., set out to surprise her college boyfriend while visiting him at his parents' home years ago.

"You remember that old (dorm) trick of painting on walls with laundry detergent, which glows brilliantly in a black light? Well, I decided to paint a rather large 'I love you' with a heart around it above his bed." Alas, she writes of her missive to the now ex-boyfriend, the blue detergent "soaked right into that (white) ceiling paint, becoming more obvious as it dried than it was when wet."

Robin Yamakawa was waiting so long for her long-distance boyfriend to move to be with her, she says, that "we often joked about having turtles dig a tunnel from his home in Dothan, Ala., to mine in Atlanta. Because they were turtles, it was taking a while," she wrote.

One Valentine's Day, "I found little paper turtles set up around his room, each carrying a little message of love," and letting her know he was moving soon.

Many fellows turned to flowers, daily, weekly or monthly, to mark their love.

Tony Michael of Albuquerque had only 13 days between notice that the Air Force was deploying him to Iraq. Still, "he pre-arranged for flowers to be delivered to me each month during the time he was gone. Each attached card was pre-written in his own handwriting and numbered so the flower shop would send them in the right order!" writes his wife, Lauri Michael. She welcomed him back six months later — with a big bouquet.

Sometimes it's the silly secret ritual, thoughtful act or the sentimental gift that hits home.

To Shawn Sponheimer of Fall River, Mass.: You should know that your girlfriend, Devon Martin, is still aglow over the pot-pie-from-scratch and Christmas-lights evening you orchestrated.

Likewise to Bill Howland of Wexford, Pa.: Your wife, Catherine, tells how you transformed a weary evening when she longed for a hot bath. "Near tears, I realized I'd emptied the hot water tank for the kids. Then my husband appeared with a sauce-pan full of hot water. Tending four pots at a time on the stove, he filled up my bath with so much water, so much warmth."

Rhonda Carr of North Huntingdon, Pa., writes, "My husband hates cucumbers in his salads, but I still sneak them in" to get Harry to eat more vegetables. For 20 years, she has put one cucumber slice in his salad, "and he gives it back with a smile and a wink, and we both know we are saying 'I love you.' "

In Alice and Joe Winkie's Louisville home, there's a place of honor for a handful of freebie perfume vials.

Two decades ago when they were dating and he was a struggling single father, he took his son to the mall. They "went to all the perfume counters and asked for samples of perfume." He gave her 50 vials in a big envelope with a valentine.

Gestures gone amiss were mentioned, too, including the saga of the Niceville, Fla., teen who showered neighbor Crystal Taunton with unwelcome notes, cash, jewelry and CDs, despite her protests, she recalls.

The gifts stopped, Taunton writes, only when "my crazy love-struck neighbor was sent to a juvenile detention center for breaking and entering in the neighborhood, lifting money, jewelry and CDs."