Figure 1 – Pansies or Food for Thought, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Sometimes it is the simple things, and the photograph is no further away than your own doorstep.  I love the simple beauty of spring pansies with their little pensive lion faces looking back at you and floating in a gentle breeze.  There is ever the sense of the coolness associated with not quite summer.

The English name pansy comes from the French word pensée “thought.”  It was imported into Late Middle English as a name of for certain violets in the mid-15th century.  Shakespeare has Ophelia remind us that these flowers are to be, along with rosemary, regarded as symbols of remembrance.   I can never look at them without remembering  walking with a friend (and reader) in San Jose some years ago and discussing Ophelia’s words:

“Look at my flowers. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembering. Please remember, love. And there are pansies, they’re for thoughts.”