The secret life of violets

摘要

The most celebrated flowers in literature first seduced GeraldineTaylor as a girl, and they have since waymarked her life. Now her passion for violets draws her to find the first fragrant blooms of spring. Just one flower broadcasts its scent a long way. I once found a patch of three by their scent, carried on a damp wind over fifteen metres. I've dug in the snow to find these flowers, and sometimes, I've knelt under the morning stars and warmed frost from their petals. Wild sweet violets bloom at the very edge of winter, with an astonishing perfume drawn (it seems to me) from the sweet, fungal decay of autumn.