Pansies For Thought

Purchased today at a local antique mall, an early, primitive style pansy painting.

Today a trip out for lunch and a dash through a local antique mall added a new painting to my already overwhelming collection of vintage and Victorian flower oils.  I seem to be on  a shopping spree this month, but the treasures I've found can't be left behind.

I love the folklore behind old fashioned flower names. My antique garden book collection contains several copies of The Language of Flowers.

Pansies mean 'to think', particularly of love. The flower's name comes from the French word pensee, which means thought. The French believed that a pansy would make your lover think of you.

My new painting brought back many thoughts, as I remembered the days I sold vintage art on Ebay. It was a lovely time. Ebay was just starting out and the excitement of finding treasures from the comfort of your home, kept me in trouble most days. Boxes, upon boxes, were delivered to my house, each filled with a wonderful old painting with a flower or garden theme. I bought more than I sold, but the selling was good too.

My husband was alive then, and thought I'd lost my mind, with all my purchases, and the walls of our house full of nail holes covered by paintings. It always took at least three tries with a hammer to get a painting positioned the way I like. He told me once there was nothing more terrifying than watching me walk around a room with a hammer.

My new painting is on a round wood box top. The background is a soft robins egg blue, the color of an early morning sky in spring. The simple flowers, so gently painted, remind me of a time when I was more naive, my home complete, before my life changed. The delicate pansy faces made me smile, as I thought about the man who captured my heart so many years ago.

A Victorian Postcard full of Pansies reads Think of Me.

Life, like a garden, is constantly in flux. Today my garden is full of memories, tomorrow I might just fill it with pansies!