“Look at us, said the violets blooming at her feet, all last winter we slept in the seeming death but at the right time God awakened us, and here we are to comfort you.”

– Edward Payson Roe

One of my favorite parts of Spring is the return of the violets.  My childhood home had a long hedge of spirea bushes that divided the backyard from a sloping rock garden that covered the hill that divided the lawn from the driveway below.  The rock garden was filled with many delicate flowers — not the sort that survived well when picked and taken indoors.  I was not allowed to gather them, but only to enjoy them where they grew.  The violets were different.  They grew by the hundreds, voluntarily, beneath the cascading white waterfalls of the spirea, hidden in the shady places untouched by the sun.  We could pick all we wanted, and still they would bloom again and again.  Some of my first gifts for my mother were fistfuls of violets; and she always treated them as treasures, putting them in water in a fancy little vase that was just the right size.

The violets seem to have followed me; and now they dot my own backyard, bringing spots of color to the lawn underneath the apple tree and in the shady nooks behind the shed.  I was mowing one day and feeling sad that I would be trimming them, so I came inside and did some looking on the internet for suggestions on transplanting them to a safe location.  What popped up as a result of my search was this:

“How do I get rid of wild violets in my lawn?  I have an invasion of wild violets in my lawn.  How do I get rid of them?”

An invasion of violets?  It sounded so war-like and menacing.  How do I get rid of an invasion of violets.

I have always seen the violets as colorful little expressions of hope in an otherwise monochromatic world.  Certainly, there were flowers on the other side of the hedge, but they belonged to someone else; and I knew I could not own them.  The violets, on the other hand, were freely given to me — a gift, planted right in my own backyard.  No matter how many I picked, they would return again and again to delight me simply by continuing to bloom, regardless of their lack of cultivation.  It almost seemed that the more I picked, the more they bloomed.  Perhaps that is what defines them, for some people, as a weed.

How often do we look beyond the hedge to the beauty that lies out of reach and forget to see the tiny spots of color that lie in the shade of the bushes?  Do we compare the two sides of the hedge and become disdainful that the gifts we are given seem to small or insignificant, or do we stoop down and pick a fistful of hope and allow the color into our lives?  Let’s pick some violets today — a fistful or two — and when we are done, let’s share them with someone who could use a little color in their life.  Perhaps they will see the beauty.  Perhaps they will call it weeds and toss it aside.  Either way, when we pick the violets, we may encourage more to grow.

And, for the record, solution #3 to controlling invasive violets was, “learn to live with them and enjoy them.”