Spring Violets

I’ve had quite a few special orders for my cards recently, so I’ve been working hard on those and as a result I didn’t manage to get out for a walk today. Smithers, on the other hand, strolled down to the Broadway to collect a prescription for The Traveller, so he’s currently ahead of me on the activity front. (Not that we’re competitive you understand, but we do frequently check each other’s exercise statistics on our watches …).

I’m still trying to continue the home decluttering effort at the same time as making cards because, for an incredibly tidy person, I have the most dreadfully messy craft room! When I’m in creative mode, I just pull out stamps, ink pads, dies, bits of printed card, ribbon and all sorts and within seconds a tidy desk can look like the aftermath of a jumble sale. However, gradually, almost imperceptibly, one sheet of paper at a time, my desktop is becoming clearer and my heart is feeling lighter.

This shot of my kitchen windowsill also makes my heart feel lighter. Tiny posies are my ‘thing’ and spring is definitely a good time for those. My garden is covered at the moment with fabulous clumps of sweet violets which have self-seeded all over the place and, much as I agree with John Clare that they look wonderful in their natural setting by mossy stumps and in dead leafy beds, I just can’t resist picking a few every year to go in this tiny Art Nouveau vase so they can be enjoyed indoors as well.


Spring Violets

Push that rough maple bush aside,
Its bark is all ridgy – and naked beside;
But it stands in the way of the flowers that engross
My eye – in bloom, by its stump of green moss:
How green is the moss, and how purple the flower,
I’ll not pluck thee, sweet violets, in thy own sheltered bower!

The first sunny days, they were nought but green leaves,
When the bush, threw another bush, on the dead leaves.
So perfect, and true, and such shadows I love,
That it seemed an ink-drawing, of the maple above:
The moss it looks greener, the flowers are so blue
While the gold sun of spring looks delightfully through.

There’s no flowers more red, than the flower of the larch,
And none are so sweet as the violets of March;
In their dead leafy beds, how intensely dark blue,
By the moss maple stump, where the sunlight looks through:
Those sweet flowers that look up, in their beautiful bloom,
Will ne’er live to see the bright maple leaves come.

John Clare (1793 – 1864)