Bouquet of January: Daisies and Strawberry Leaves.

 

Yesterday I went out for a stroll - it was Sunday, and the icy wind threw a fine drizzle of snow into my face. I hoped very much that it wouldn't get more: we have a rearrangement of our obligations in wintertime: now in my Bavarian domicile all 4 tenants have to do all snow shovelling in weekly turns (before after fulfilment on one day the next tenant had to shovel on the next snowy day). 

In Berlin we have a kind (and paid) janitor to do that - sigh - so much better. 

I try to gloss that tiring duty over as "fitness training" - but honestly I peer into the sky and try to conjure each potential threatening snow cloud away - abracadabra! 

As always I am looking on my strolls for flowers - and yes: I found a few courageous daisies and some strawberry leaves, tinted red by frost. 

Marianne Beuchert writes in her book: "Symbolik der Pflanzen", that daisies - bellis perennis - symbolise purity and modesty, and often are drawn on paintings of the Virgin Mary or Jesus. 

But they are also dedicated to Frejya, the love goddess. On Botticellis "Birth of Venus" the goddess gets a coat embroidered over and over with bellis. 

The Dutch proverb "Mate l´e`fte, lange l´e`fte" - "Temperated love - long life" I find a bit depressing. I love firework. I think I share that preference with Aphrodite/Venus, who also get daisies as attribute. 

    

"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.