My Violets Are Blue
This bunny, a thrift store find, made me think about our yard in the Spring. We are fortunate to live on a property Quaker Oats developed to be a research farm and showcase for the public, between 1922 and 1965. Thus, our place was hardscaped and planted to be a top of the line “family farm” circa 1930. There are wonderful stone walls and walkways. Huge old trees, including a towering basswood. Quaker Oats planted wisteria, which has aged badly. Peonies as far as the eye can see. Climbing hydrangea scaling the chimneys. Massive Oak leaf hydrangea in stands around the house. There are ancient grape vines. A wonderfully fragrant forest of lily of the valley. Unusual white Persian lilacs. A bed of antique bourbon roses. Carpets of snow drops and cilia. Fiddlehead ferns and English ivy (which is a beast to control). Stands of forsythia growing wild. (As an aside, all the plants over here grow “wild”, otherwise our relationship is doomed. My gardening style is colloquially known as “benign neglect”.) And violets all through the foundation beds around the house. Mine are blues and white, not the yellow ones painted charmingly on this bunny.
To say nothing of the myriad of things I’ve added or encouraged, in the spirit of native and maintenance free. Tricolor Beech, Redbuds, and boxwood. Oaks and Walnuts curtesy of the squirrels. Even a Tulip Tree, which mysteriously arrived. A large raspberry hedge. Prolific Sour Cherry tree. Gifts from friends of trillium, bluebells and mayapples. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things, but I will move on in the spirit of not boring you to death.
And this week, end of March, the cilia are ending their display and my forsythia plants are starting to bloom. That is at least two weeks too soon. Global warming, I suspect. Last night, the weather dropped, from the sunny pretend Spring days of late, back to normal below freezing. And I worry now about the damage to these wonderful old plants
Back to the charming, hand painted bunny. Done in 1982 by “JER”. The bunny arrived in our house from a jaunt to a thrift store – and while he was quite immobile, frozen on the shelf amid a myriad of other tchotchkes, I spotted him immediately. And boy do bunnies reign in our yard. Over the years we have watched baby bunnies literally romp playing across the yard. Uncovered nests, quite by accident. And dealt with a cat bringing a live baby bunny into the family room, with the ensuing chaos of kids squealing in delight, me yelping, the dog chasing the cat, and the cat chasing the bunny. Can’t recall how that one ended, but it still makes us laugh. Those darn bunnies love to eat things, and protecting oak saplings and other plants becomes an exercise in persistence. Sometimes the bunnies win, other times we do.
Our property is also rich in wildlife, moving through our area by the large easement that runs east of us. Deer and coyote are common. Nesting hawks are often around. Great horned owls live nearby. We haven’t seen red tail fox in a while, but over the years we’ve discovered them lounging in the sun, with a den nearby. There was a remarkably fat woodchuck years ago who tunneled endlessly. Fortunately (for our yard) it was not fond of our dog and moved on. I worry about our property’s future. It has such rich history and wonderful old buildings. And plants.
The violet symbolizes “modesty and faithfulness” in the language of flowers. Using flowers to express ideas has been around before Shakespeare’s time, but he used them often. In Hamlet, Ophelia delivers flowers to the court, saying:
There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts. ... I would give you some violets, but they wither'd all when my father died.
Meaning, of course, that faithfulness died when her father was killed. Unfortunately, our home is in a community that tends to take down old houses, building modern structures. I have had local realtors tell me our property is a “great teardown” since two houses could be built here. I have tried to sustain the place, nurturing plants as I can with my limited knowledge and resources. Struggled mightily to eradicate buckhorn and garlic mustard. We’ve made all the barns sound, and use and enjoy them. But I look to the property’s future and worry, not sure if “faithfulness” will sustain it. And so, I smile sadly when I see this charming bunny, with its sunny yellow violets. Some folks tell me violets are weeds, and I should pull them all out. But I refuse to remove them as I find them a cheerful harbinger of Spring, and hope my faithfulness will be rewarded when the day comes for us to move on.