Before we get to anything else in this post, I’m asking you to open up a new tab—better yet, a whole new window—and put Lucy Bellwood’s extraordinary comic The Scale of a Man in it. Don’t read it while you’re distracted. Set aside a few dedicated minutes. Come back to it when you’re ready for drawings of a model ship to take hold of your heart.
Okay, good. Now we can get to the stuff about the flowers.
Last week Kat sent me this 2023 apologia for violets by Alex Faidiga with the stated reason that it has a cute picture of a weird bee in it. (I love bees.) But I’m sure Kat found the article because of the situation depicted in the instant photo above. Our little back yard is overrun by violets this spring, with a side helping of ferns.
It’s a great privilege to have a little patch of green (and purple) right outside our back door. We know from neighbors that the people who lived here before us led walking tours of the trees in our neighborhood parks, in addition to their dedicated gardening. The plants that burst forth every spring are a part of their legacy. We’ve never met those previous inhabitants, but we seem to share the belief that, while tending to plants is important, a mowed lawn is not.
I am originally from Kentucky, but I hold no fondness for its namesake grass, which is associated with decreases in biodiversity and increases in men being finicky jerks. I’ll take dandelions over bluegrass any day. (I do like bluegrass music.) (And other kinds of grass as well.)
But before I came out with this post in praise of violets, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t endorsing anything with a similar reputation; happily, I learned that they are native to our biome, in addition to being the state flower of Illinois. I also learned that the species was identified from 1803 onward as viola sororia, and that no one seems certain why.
But if we’re talking in languages of antiquity, the connection of violets with certain sisterhoods dates back to Sappho. In the more modern context of a hundred years ago, performances of the Broadway hit La Prisonnière / The Captive linked violets to romance between women in a lasting way.
(Side note: I didn’t expect to find an authoritative source on that play at BasilRathbone.net, but holy shit, WHAT A GOOD SITE. Pure Web 1.0 beauty, still updating in 2026! This is why I started this newsletter, man. Okay back to the gay flowers.)
I’m not going to say that Kat and I were drawn to live here by an impending riot of queer vegetation, but I am glad and grateful for it. The flora in our yard have brought us bees and hummingbirds, along with at least one hungry rabbit. The yard belongs to the animals at least as much as it does to us. Tending to it with our little lives is important work we share. Touching grass is fine, but touching flowers is better. And eating them is pretty good too.
That’s this week’s recommendation from Kaijuville. Let’s try, like violets, to spring back if we get stepped on today.
