"The Posy of March": Violets and Daisies

 

Last year I bound quite a lot of little bunches (that word might be better than "bouquet"?) on the days spent in Bavaria. When I walked through nature I picked a few wild flowers to bring a whiff of spring or summer inside. 

Here you see the first little posy of the year 2023: three fragrant violets and three daisies, together in a tiny Meissen porcelain vase. 

"Above all flouris in the mede 

Than I love most those flouris 

White and rede;

Soche that men call daisies 

In our towne"

writes Geoffrey Chaucer. 

Daisies - or Bellis perennis - are my first flower-memory from very early childhood: 

in times - though quite a time after the end of WWII - mothers were still advised to feed their children exactly all four hours, and let them cry "to strengthen their lungs", and my mother followed that advice strictly and put my pram outside on the meadow, or, when the weather grew warmer, put me on a cover on the grass. 

Daisies fascinated me - they smelled quite strange, but looked lovely. 

 

  

First Violets!

 

Can you imagine? I found the first violets when I walked up the hills! 

They were almost invisible (I helped one out from under the leaves) - real messagers of spring! 

These were dog violets (viola canine) - so they do not smell - but though I am very keen on the fragrance of flowers, this time I had nothing to nag but was just happy. 

Of course I didn't pick them - because though the weather is really cold I saw the first courageous bees - and they will need all the nectar they can find. 

I don't know whether they are still in fashion, but as pupils we had in Germany friendship books, we called them "Poesiealbum" - one wrote a more (or less) wise saying into it, and painted or pasted a glittering picture beside it. 

Very popular was this one: 

"Be like the little violet in the moss, modest, demure and pure/ and not like the proud rose/ which always wants to be adored!" 

(Well - I like roses :-)   

And I suspect that the anonymous poet didn't know much about botany: the violet is a very doggedly plant, with a high urge to to spread itself out. Yes, they occupied almost the whole world, both hemispheres. 

And I always think of C.G.Jung and his theory of "the Shadow", when I look at all those people striving for power or world domination - whose favourite flower was the modest violet: Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Winston Churchill. 

And many others.