Friday 24 March 2023

"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. 

 




  

4 comments:

  1. Exactly every four hours? Let them cry to strengthen their lungs? Probably not, these days :)

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  2. Those days are over, Helen, and I think that it is very good so.
    But time tables were official advice for the mothers, and when they were young and inexperienced, and not very strong to do as the felt, they did what they were told.
    Dr. Spock in America was the first genuine rebel against that - but in Germany even 10 years later most mothers didn't know his friendly way of education. He was decidedly against what in America too was standard when his book was published in 1946: till then education functioned with a rigid time table - same time for all children(!) to be fed, sit on the potty and being brought to bed.
    Dr. Spock was the first who said: "The child has not to be trained."
    That view came to Germany timidly at the end of the Fifties, beginning Sixties.


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  3. Dear Britta, your little posy is adorable and Meissen is the only way to show it off! It must be wonderful knowing that more bunches of flowers will be wending their way into your home now that the weather has made a turn for the better.

    I cannot imagine what my first flower memory might have been, you are lucky to have such recall. If anything, I suspect the yellow dandelion or white clover, the mainstays of our back lawn :)

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  4. Dear Pip, I so seldom get comments on this blog, thus today was the first day I risked a second glance :-)
    Sorry that you had to wait so long for my answer!

    I enjoy gathering those little flowers because every day I walk around I find something new - it is never the same picture as the day before, and always a joy to bind different bunches. Though "bunch" sounds thicker than they really are - I "suffered" two thirds of my life under the strict interdiction to pick flowers ("The poor flowers!" "The poor bees!") - till one day I saw that the flowers I heroically refrained from picking lay wilting on the ground - a machine had rolled over them, or those awful hedge cutter machines mow whole hedges without looking at their stature or growth.. Now I modestly pick, ha!

    I can imagine that dandelion make a big impression on a child - and white clover has such a lovely smell that I can instantly remember it (they say one cannot remember scents, but that is definitely not true).

    ReplyDelete

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