Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

You know spring is on her way when the violets start to bloom. If you are lucky enough to have a patch of sweet violets, you may catch their perfume on the breeze. The fragrance of viola odorata has been used in perfumery for centuries. It has an odd quality of presence and non presence… the ionone it contains makes the fragrance seem to disappear and become undetectable by humans from one moment to the next. Perhaps it is for this reason that violets were sometimes included in ancient love potions.

In Christian mythology, the violet is said to have bloomed when Gabriel announced to Mary that she was to bear the Son of God. In some versions of the Greek myths, Persephone was picking violets with ‘the deep-bosomed daughters of Okeanos’ when she was kidnapped and taken to the Underworld. Yet other stories tell that it was the goddess…