How did the word pansy ever come to mean weak and ineffective? There must be a fragile plant whose name better deserves this honor like, “Hey pal, don’t be such an orchid!” (I’m guessing orchid growers will tell me how vigorous that plant is, too.) I plant pansies in October, that I buy during the height of fall at the Saturday market. Not only do they maintain a few blooms all winter, but in the spring they practically explode with flowers.
After a long, cold winter
I have seen pansies that, after being under two feet of snow, continue to bloom after the snow has melted! Last year I covered lettuce and herbs with plastic that wasn’t wide enough to include the pansies and protect them from direct contact with the snow. Those poor, naked plants endured under high, heavy drifts for weeks. To be sure, when the snow melted, the plants were flattened to the ground, but the leaves and many of the blooms started to perk up even in the tepid, winter sun. After a month of warmer spring weather, pansies are laden with blooms. I plant them about a foot apart in fall, knowing how they’ll fill the space the next spring.
These brave, hardy souls give me pause and encouragement. I love the unlikely, the beautiful and precious in the last place you’d expect, and pansies are nothing if not that. Who could imagine such persistence, such staying power? Actually, we should tell mountain climbers and marathon runners, doctors, nurses and other human services people who work long shifts through the night: “You are such a pansy. I really admire that.”
Instead of calling a grueling triathlon the Ironman, it should be called the Pansyman. Instead of the Iditerod, the Pansiterod. I’m thinking the pansy will be the new flower I put on my family crest. Look to the pansy. Be like a pansy. Pansy-fy your life and go far!
Toughness Incarnate
