sovay | We'll tell you of a blossom and of buds on every tree

Rabbit, rabbit! For May Day, I made a garland and

spatch photographed me. The inspiration was

The awful razing of our yard last summer produced one unexpected result this spring: we have a ground cover of violets. I picked a sufficient-looking quantity and brought them inside where I discovered that my romantic idea of braiding a garland was woefully inadequate to the tendency of stems to snap. I knotted them at intervals with thread.

Considering that I cannot remember ever making a garland of wild flowers before in my life, I was pleased with the results.

In which I am doing my best to become a green man of the lilac, just budding but already summer-sweet.

The photographer thought I looked like a heroic statue.

Because everyone should be offered a branch of May, even if it's a Bradford pear.

And on the porch was sitting the copy of Vivien Alcock's A Kind of Thief (1991) that

osprey_archer had offered a week ago and Hestia had run across my computer to claim, so she will sit on it and I will read it and we will welcome in the spring.

Threaded | Flat

What delightful pictures, and so very spring!

Oh, how lovely! My childhood backyard was a sea of violets, blue and pied—but I never met their spirit until now.

Nine

In which I am doing my best to become a green man of the lilac, just budding but already summer-sweet.

Excellent! <3

I love the photo shoot, and especially your violet crown. The last photo is particularly elfin.

TIL what violets look like. :) Lovely pix!

Edited (dire typo) 2026-05-01 23:59 (UTC)

Wonderful spring photos!

Ohhh gorgeous!

(It was a frost warning and I had to work and then do physio. But tomorrow, cherry blossoms.)

You look fantabulous! I love the violet crown.

When I was a kid in Ohio our backyard was full of violets and I could never get them to braid either. We had some sort of small yellow flower too that I had more success with -- I always called them buttercups but I don't know if they technically were -- and so sometimes I'd stick a violet or two into the braid I was making with those, but even with those, my results never really matched my mental images. Your thread-assisted version works much better!

You look like the Enlightenment ideal of the Green Man, I think. And that is a very impressive flower crown for using real flowers; most of the ones I've seen done are with silk and florist's wire due to the tensile lacking inherent in stems, but then you end up with other things lacking as a result. I love how vivid the violets are, and the sense of movement in the petals. The pear blossoms are lovely, too.