Sweet Violets

So many of you have commented on the new wallpaper I put up last week.  It makes me smile.

I've always loved violets for as long as I can remember.  I think I first read of them in one of Louisa May Alcott's books.  Was it in Little Women or An Old Fashioned Girl?  I'll lay odds it was the latter book, as I loved it long before I grew to appreciate the virtues of Little Women.



For as long as I could remember, Granny kept a large flower pot of violets at her doorsteps.  Never once in all the years she had them did they bloom, though they had lush foliage and looked quite healthy.  Back in my childhood, one could still buy stationery sets...after all we had no email and long distance was costly.  Letters sent via postal service were very much the thing.  And so stationery sets were considered most suitable as gifts for young girls.   It so happens that even back in my early teens I loved to write (can you imagine?) and I sent letters to friends who lived out of town quite often.  I was thrilled to pieces when I received a set of stationery that was pale lavender in color and had the sweetest deep purple violets imprinted on the border and heaven of heavens, the pages were scented with violets as well!

When I was 13, we moved to a house in the country.    The places about the house were liberally planted with strong old fashioned things.  Banana Bush covered in bright yellow waxy banana scented flowers.   Flowering Almond with sweet little puffs of fluffy pink on each branch.   Wisteria, pale lavender, sweetly fragrant.  Scotch Broom and forsythia and Quince to add lovely colors.  Sweet Shrub which filled the air with a spicy tantalizing scent.  And a fragrance I couldn't quite put my finger on, familiar and sweet and light and innocent....Imagine my huge excitement when I discovered the whole front flower beds were packed to overflowing with violets.  The lovely deep purple violets I'd longed to see, and a pale lavender one and a white Confederate violet that was even more deeply scented than the purple ones.

Mama tried to be rid of the violets.  Truth told they crowded out the things she planted and wanted to grow but those flower beds refused to give up those violets. For the next 20 years she fought the battle and lost it.  The violets would grow and grow they would.

Mama had a short squat green glass vase with a wide fluted mouth.  I'd known all my life what that vase was meant to be used for and each year I filled it with a mass of violets.  I had to keep them in my room.  Cut flowers weren't allowed in the other rooms of the house, but I needed them in my room at the least and especially when the violets were in bloom.

It was always my regret I couldn't buy a violet perfume.  A quick search just now revealed that there are loads of violet scented bath products and perfumes.  I'd have been broke had we had the internet back then!

My first marriage was a thrown together, last minute affair.  Mama and Daddy did their best to make it lovely with just what was at hand.  My dress was a soft pale green and my bouquet was a double handful of violets picked fresh moments before the wedding.  The wedding cake was Granny's old fashioned pound cake iced with white frosting and decorated with violets.  For once the house was a bower of flowers.  Daddy had gone out and cut branches of peach blossoms and crabapple and plum and gathered every blooming thing he could find.  It was lovely.  I wish the marriage had been as well.

I have lived for years without violets save a pair of tea cups I found at a yard sale for a quarter.  Not fine china, but dime store china with a lovely pattern of violets.  I kept those cups for years and was heart broken when I dropped and broke them after moving here.

This year, I determined I had to have violets once again.  I don't have live ones.  I have them splashed over the blog.   Just a little nod to my love of sweet violets.