Last week, I was reminded of my gran's house after seeing a patch of bluebells in the back garden. Gran was my mother's mum and she lived in a sprawling old home in the Adelaide suburb of Erindale. I was the first born grandchild, so she always had a soft spot for me and I have many wonderful memories of the time I spent at her house when I was a young child.

Yesterday, this sight transported me instantly to my other grandma's house:




Glorious woodland violets - the first for the season. My dad's mum (we called her nana) lived in the small Victorian coastal town of Port Fairy and so we saw her less often, though during the school holidays I often went there for a week and had a ball going out in the fishing boat with gramps and Uncle Andy along to Lady Julia Percy Island to look at the mutton birds, exploring the surrounding farmlands near nana's house and listening to stories she told while we dug in her garden. Her garden and house fascinated me. She lived in a wooden cottage, something you never saw in South Australia and her garden was green and lush in a way that you could never achieve on the hot, dry Adelaide Plains. I thought it was paradise. I still remember carefully stroking the pretty, exotic tree ferns, soft mosses and baby's tears and looking at the profusion of cottage flowers that she grew.

Among her favourites were these very same pretty woodland violets. You could almost say that she was obsessed. She had them embroidered on her lingerie and handkerchiefs, she used a violet perfume, had violet sachets in her clothing drawers and her favourite sweets were those L'Anis de Flavigny Violet pastilles that come in wonderful old-fashioned tins. My aunt who lived in the Netherlands sent them to nana every Christmas. When she had the local ladies over for afternoon tea, she used a pure white crisp linen tablecloth embroidered with sprays of violets and her very best tea set was a delicate Limoges one, with hand-painted violets that once belonged to her own grandmother.

She told me that violets were delicate looking plants, but very tough and that they symbolised great love, which was why she had crystallised violets on her wedding cake. One of the stories she told was of Empress Josephine, who embroidered her wedding gown with violets, and who always wore violet scent. Apparently, when she died, Napoleon planted violets on her grave. His last stop on the way to exile in St. Helena was at Josephine's last resting place where he picked a handful of those violets and placed them in a locket which he wore until his own death.

I think my nana was a real romantic at heart. And how wonderful that these violets appeared in the garden today - on her birthday. She would have been delighted.