A Room with a View of Violets in February

The special flower for the month of February is the violet.

The violet signifies watchfulness, loyalty, and faithfulness.

Give a violet to someone to let them know you’ll always be there for them.

In A Room with a View, E.M Forster has a lovely description of violets.

The ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of the wood. Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end.

“Courage!” cried her companion, now standing some six feet above. “Courage and love.”

She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.

George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her.

I photographed these violets on a visit to Rievaulx Terraces in North Yorkshire a few years ago.

Such lovely shy, delicate flowers along with primroses and cowslips.

And fabulous views of the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey.

Thanks for reading my blog today.