Wordless Wednesdays: 12 Views of Purplish Blooms and Blossoms

Bring Me Purple Pansies

Pansies

Pansies in the morning light

“But bring me purple pansies
If so you wish to please,
For them I have affection,
For pansies are ‘heart’s ease.'”
— Louise Cooke Don-Carlos, from “Pansies”

“For pansies are, I think, the little gleams
Of children’s visions from a world of dreams . . . ”
— R. C. Lehmann, from “Pansies”

The word pansy derives from the French pensee, meaning “thought.”

Walking the Color Wheel: Seattle’s Summer Purples

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”
–Alice Walker

Pale purple gladiolus

A purple trio of geranium flowers

Purple pansies all in a row

Purple poppies

Lovely magenta poppies

Poppy

Somewhere between purple and red, knautica macedonica

Plum-colored hydrangea

Allium

Clematis vine

Late season lavender

Fuchsia-colored foxglove, purplish pink

Purplish-pinks and blues of sweet peas

Plums, Pike Place Market

Bing cherries, Pike Place Market

This concludes our walks along the color wheel.  Hope you enjoyed the rambles!

Beaded Blue: Grape Hyacinths

Grape hyacinths growing through violet pansies

Watercolor sketch of grape hyacinths and pansies

“It was as if a cluster of grapes and a hive of honey had been distilled and pressed together into one small boss of celled and beaded blue.”
     — Ruskin

Welcome Home

“Sweet is the hour that brings us home,
Where all will spring to meet us . . .”
     — Eliza Cook, “The Welcome Back”

Here are some images of welcoming homes in my neighborhood:

Basket of spring flowers on the porch

Pansies and watering can on the porch

Bouquet of tulips through a window

A neighbor's front steps

Pansies’ Streaked Faces

Pansies and hyacinth, Volunteer Park

Pansies and hyacinth

“Flowers, to my thinking, are not merely pretty-pretty.  They have in their fragrance an earthiness of the humus and the corruptive earth from which they spring. . . . And pansies, in their streaked faces, have a look of many things besides heartsease.”
     — D. H. Lawrence, Pansies

Pansies in a Bike Basket

Pansies in a bike basket

Pansies in a bike basket

Vintage bike with pansies

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.”
     — William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 4.5 

I see this vintage bike parked outside a house on my daily walk home from Green Lake. The pansies in the bike basket are a cheerful morning greeting.  Pansies are the flower symbol for thoughtfulness.  This neighborly  bike bouquet is thoughtful, indeed.

 

 

 

Spring Color Walk: Purple

Purple tulip

Purple Pansy

Detail of purple pansy

I love the exploding top on this grape hyacinth

Purple tulip bud

Yesterday’s post about “puddle walks” recalled for me another favorite mother-daughter activity: “color walks,” where we made a game of searching out as many hues of a color as we could.  I got this idea from one of the parenting books I read.  Forgive me if I can’t remember the title; it has been over a decade since I’ve researched nature activities for children.  But it might have been Sharing Nature with Children by Joseph Cornell, which was one of my favorites.

It’s still too early here for lilacs or iris, but you can see that I have been drawn to the color purple on my recent walks.

Here is a list of purply colors.  Can you think of more?
— purple
— violet
— lilac
— lavender
— aubergine
— eggplant
— plum
— mauve
— grape
— burgundy
— mulberry
— puce
— maroon
–claret