"and it was Spring for a while, remember?"

Spring has finally, finally come to the north. It's late - I've sometimes planted the whole garden by May 15, but no one could have done that here this year. Last week was cold and rainy, but the past few days have warmed up steadily. I'll be heading over to the garden later today, with a box of roots and tubers it finally feels safe enough to plant.

Euphorbia and a favorite fossil rock from central New York state, in my garden.

Spring, for all its beauty and newness, always makes me a little bit melancholy. I've never understood why, except that it reminds of the truth of impermanence about everything we cherish. Spring reminds me of the need to open my eyes fully to the beauty around me, to love it completely and yet let it go, knowing it can't stay and that I can't hold onto it. "Do not cling to me!" Exactly.

Sometimes spring knocks you right off your feet, particularly so for those of us who have lived for six months in a monochromatic world. It's too much. I stumble home, dazed.

Better for me to get down on my knees and engage the small things. I moved two clumps of woodland violets into my little plot this year. Many gardeners don't like them because they tend to pop up in unwanted places. I don't mind.

Violets were my mother's favorite flower. She'll be gone five years on the 23rd, a fact I find astounding. I think of her, very young, wearing a corsage of deep purple violets with a pink rose at the center; and I think of her, very old, sitting in her favorite chair near the piano and asking me to play "I Bought You Violets for Your Furs:"

It was winter in manhattan, falling snow flakes filled the air
The streets were covered with a film of ice
But a little simple magic that I learned about somewhere
Changed the weather all around, just within a thrice.

I bought you violets for your furs and it was spring for a while, remember?
I bought you violets for your furs and there was april in that december.
The snow drifted down and the flowers, and that is where it lay.
The snow looked like dew and the blossoms as on a summer day.
I bought you violets for your furs and there was blue in the wintry sky,
You pinned my violets to your furs and gave a lift to the crowds passing by,
You smiled at me so sweetly, since then one thought occurs,
That we fell in love completely, the day I bought you violets for your furs.

Comments

[Kat]

(o)

[Rachel Barenblat]

Thank you for these beautiful words, images, and reminders.

[Mary]

what a great memory. thanks for sharing it.

[Vivien]

Lovely song - sounds more Edwardian (early part of 20th c, if Americans don't use this word) than 1950s - though it may have been written for a mother who was young in the 1900s, maybe. My grandmother used to sing the popular Edwardian song "I like a nice cup of tea in the morning..." which went on to describe the six or so following cups of tea the singer had during the day! Not quite as poetic as the violets song but it has an atmosphere of that time.

[Vivien]

Re-read the poem and noticed the singer fell in love with the violet-wearer, so it wouldn't have been a mother!

[hal lewis]

If your readers like gardens look up "Gardens" An Essay on the Human Condition by Robert Pogue
Harrison. Paperback University of Chicago Press. From the gardens of ancient philosophers to the gardens of homeless people in New York. He show again and again, the garden has served as a check against the destruction and losses of history. Also he has an excellent chapter on The Garden School of Epicurus explaining chief amount Epicurean virtues is friendship. Harrison point out that unlike other arts such as painting, you enter into a garden and become very much a part of it. You and nature.

[Beth]

Thanks, Kat, Rachel, Mary.

Vivien: The song was written by Thomas Adair and Matt Dennis is 1941, so it would have had those bittersweet wartime associations for my mother. And I'm sure she always heard the Frank Sinatra version in her head -- she was a big Sinatra fan. I actually remember part of that tea song - must be my grandmother, an avid tea drinker herself, knew it!

Hal: I will definitely look up the Pogue book, sounds perfect for me, with lots to write about here. Thank you. I felt the Epicurian virtue very strongly today as I worked in my garden, stopping to chat every now and then with my fellow gardeners, all of us intoxicated with the spring and the beauty around us. I love the quality of gardens as living sculpture, art that we - as you say - enter into and become part of.

[marly youmans]

Oh, that is sweet. The whole idea of wearing furs and pinning violets to them seems so impossibly far away and romantic, doesn't it? I have lots of violets in my yard and in the wildflower garden and mixed in with hostas. I love those big heart-shaped leaves and the white or purple or streaked flowers.

[Pat Temiz]

Hi Beth, Also a Frank Sinatra fan I could hear him singing it in my head while I read your lyrics. I also grow violets here in Turkey but they start to bloom in late December and are over by late February. Climate makes all the difference.

[magnolia]

There was only one Frank Sinatra!

Thank you for sharing peeks into your spring. Mother's are special and it is clear memories of her are good.

Thank you for sharing.

[hal lewis]

My comment on the "Gardens" book had a line brake leaving the impression that the author's last name was Pogue.....it's Harrison. Robert Pogue Harrison. He is a professor of Italian at Stanford University.
Sorry.

[sewa mobil]

Very beautiful, thanks.

[Dick]

Somehow I've never come across 'Violets For Your Furs' before. What excellent taste in popular music your mother had, Beth. My mother's all-time favourite was Bing Crosby singing 'My Melancholy Baby'. A reminder to those of growing up through the '60s/'70s that we didn't invent popular music of class, style and substance!

[Natalie]

Beth,lovely post and pictures.
I'm a Sinatra fan too but never heard this song until now - here is Ol' Blue Eyes voice on YouTube singing it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrvE8s1IeW0&feature=related

Wish I could hear you playing it on the piano!