Days of Violets and Sunshine

Photo by Jennifer Burk on Unsplash

Every year, as soon as the grass gets to really growing, the vivid green of our yard becomes liberally dotted with bright yellow dandelions and deep purple violets. The dandelions grow everywhere, but the violets prefer the sunniest patches, growing so densely in some areas that the grass looks almost blue. I love this time of year. Violets are spring to me: small and perky and brightly clothed and deceptively fragile in appearance. The thin stems shoot up above the ground-hugging, heart-shaped leaves, seemingly too frail for the bright petals that unfurl like miniature butterfly wings in the sunshine. Some will return over the course of the summer and fall, but this is boom time, and I’m loving it. This year, instead of merely appreciating the visual delight of the abundant blooms, I decided to take advantage of our wealth of edible delights in ways I haven’t done before. It started with a search for herbal sugars, an easy and appropriate gift for my plant-loving sister.

Arin Murphy-Hiscock’s The Green Witch has become my go-to source for unusual plant-inspired recipes, so to it I went, flipping back to the section on infused sugars, oils, and vinegars. My eyes snagged on a recipe for “Sweet Violet Syrup” and I thought…why have I never tried this? It takes 24 hours to brew, and the birthday party was that evening (because I don’t procrastinate at all), so I settled on lavender sugar instead (another winner that left me wondering why I hadn’t already tried it). The violet syrup settled down to wait in the back of my mind like a patient pet, and the next warm day we had saw me grabbing a bowl and my sun hat and hunkering down in one of the biggest violet patches right behind the house. I needed 2 cups of violets, just the flowers, not stems or leaves. No problem, we only grow about a million of them. I started picking. And quickly remembered why I kind of hate growing chamomile even though I always do. Picking small flower heads, by hand, is the definition of tedious. But the grass was sun warm, and the recent cold snap had been keeping me indoors more than I liked, and it was almost Earth Day. I kept at it, letting my thoughts wander at will and the warm sun melt the pent-up tension of constantly pretending to be an adult with the authority to tell two small and fierce individuals how to live safely and harmoniously. It’s exhausting.

Out here, in the grass, with one simple job to do and slow but steady—and clearly visible and measurable—progress, I was free to just be. It’s a feeling I miss from my years in school. I liked having a clear goal to strive for, the badge of honor that every A was to me. I was “book smart” enough and worked hard enough that school wasn’t too much of a struggle, just struggle enough to keep me focused and feel the wash of achievement (or, occasionally, the sting of disappointment) each time a grade was posted. This time of year, when my husband submerges almost entirely into the whirlpool of finals and end-of-semester events and meetings and grading until his eyes blur, I feel totally crazy for actually missing the crunch and chaos of finals. School was a place where I knew all the rules and I consistently excelled. School was one place where I knew I could make my family proud, and be happy doing it. School made sense to me. “Real life” is a lot more complicated.

Picking violets was actually quite meditative once I gave myself over to the tedium. I started appreciating the rhythm of the work, the different shades of color from flower to flower, the kinds of grasses and other plants that grew in different areas of the patch. I could dip my fingers into the luscious carpet and feel close to the Mother. As Arin Murphy-Hiscock says,

Green witchcraft is an ongoing celebration of life. It is a dialogue with nature, a practice that enriches both the green witch and the earth itself. The exchange of energy produces manifold benefits that may be stated in simple terms: through this dialogue, we heal the earth and the earth heals us¹.

I could feel the exchange of energy as it was happening, that subtle attuning of a common internal rhythm that happens when I’m around people I know well and am comfortable with. The plants growing in my patch of earth are becoming old friends, and it makes me happy and less lonely. Even with no gift to offer the violets in exchange for their many, many flowers, I didn’t feel empty handed. I felt like a companion. I could offer the plants the gift of friendship and my gratitude, and, oddly, it felt like enough.