Like love, violets gladden the heart

Wenlock Edge Violets have a built-in nostalgia, a belonging to something that is always fleeting and longed forA century and a half ago, when springs were different, the poet John Clare wrote: “All bleaching in the thin March air / the scattered violets lie.” (March Violet). He may have meant violets growing under withered and bleached nettle stems, but for me, today, there are shining white violets “bleaching” on the hedge bank in one of the last cold, grey, “thin&