content to bloom

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Down in a green and crowded box
A modest pansy grew
Its stalk was bent it hung its head
As if to hide from view.
And yet, it was a lovely flower
Its colors bright and fair,
It might have graced a rosy bower
Instead of hiding there.

Yet there it was, content to bloom
Its modest tints arrayed,
And there it spread its sweet perfume
Within the silent shade.
Then let me to the window go
This pretty flower to see
That I may also learn to grow
In sweet humility.

~ Author Unknown

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I found this poem back in August, written or copied by hand, on a slip of paper hidden between other papers in one of the family history boxes I was diligently sorting through. I don’t know if one of our ancestors wrote it or if they copied it down from some other source. Naturally, I thought it would make for a great post when pansy season came around.

Well, I was still pondering how different the seasons are down south here, after experiencing apple picking for Lammas Day instead of on the Autumn Equinox. I was in for another big surprise. It turns out pansies are considered cool season annuals in North Carolina, and they bloom from fall through spring! They are usually planted from late October through the month of November!

Then I remembered noticing last fall that the local nursery was selling pansies right alongside mums. Another memory surfaced, too, seeing pansies in flower boxes along the sidewalks back in January 2019, when we were down here visiting. It seemed like they were out so early, but they had probably been there since November.

These discoveries are leading to a paradigm shift in how the wheel of the year looks to me. So I decided to be a careful observer for a year or two, letting my old assumptions go and gradually finding a new way of thinking about (and celebrating!) the seasons.

Pansies for All Souls’ Day? In honor of an ancestor who loved and wrote down this poem? Why not? “Learning to grow in sweet humility…’