The violets in my garden, mostly purple, white, and freckled varieties of Viola sororia, are long gone, with only their heart-shaped leaves to remind me that they will be among the first out of the ground next spring. Somehow though, violets keep cropping up in my orbit. Last summer, I read the wonderful Violetta, by … Read more
Back in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, European weavers created large tapestries that depicted tales from history or mythology. They adorned the backgrounds of those tapestries with hundreds of small, irregularly-spaced flowers, often against a green or dark background. This style, called “millefleur”, meaning “thousand flowers” was meant to suggest a flower-filled field. The best … Read more
At this time of the year we celebrate spring by rushing out to the garden centers and buying flats of pansies and violas. We breathe the warming air and fill up our window boxes, pots and borders with these spring avatars. And then we turn around and try to exterminate their cousins, the common violets, … Read more
