Granny Violet

I spotted this clump of violets in the corner of the garden for the first time recently as we have removed an old oil tank. The evening light was catching them so I prostrated myself to get an image. As you can see, I had help from my assistant Ollie dog.

This got me thinking of International Women's Day and my granny Violet in particular. When my father was a baby she worked as a housekeeper for the doctor whose family owned the farm next door. She got into horticulture in the Dengie Hundred, bought the nursery where I was born and made a great success of the business. She used to export tomato seed and was one of the few people in the village to own and drive a car. Definitely a woman in a man's world.

It's a very strange coincidence that I met MrQ in my home village and came to live here next to where my granny worked. In her time at the farm our garden was just a field next to it. I like to think that she might have seen clumps of her namesake flowers in it, forebears of the ones above.