MARIE INVITES YOU

“The Queen introduced sleighing parties, which were organised like this: the Queen invited the women she wanted to be there. When she invited the princesses, she sent a page to convey her personal invitation to those of the princesses’ ladies-in-waiting it pleased her to choose; usually she only asked one at a time. We went from Versailles to country houses, to La Muette, to Meudon, etc. There, we descended from the sleighs, went into a salon, got warm, chatted for three-quarters of an hour or an hour; after that, we got back into the sledges and returned to Versailles.”

— Madame de Genlis - Memoirs

While I did not send out a page to convey my personal invitation to join in my birthday celebrations, I did sketch up a few parchments with roses and gold leaf, one for each member of my party.

CARPET OF PETALS

Every year, in the spring, a carpet of petals blooms under the feet of the cherry blossom trees. Scattered in every-which-way with the wind, the petals fall in drifts, till all the patio is pink. 

Going back many hundreds of years, the people's of the earth have practiced throwing or arranging flower petals at the turning of spring. The people of Italy still carry on this practice today, with the festivals of Infiorata - where petals of different colours are laid down carefully into a brightly patterned carpet. These carpets are worked in a matter of hours, and seem to appear overnight. They can disappear just as quickly. 

Maybe the cherry blossom trees are practicing their own kind of joyous spring celebration, laying down their petals in natural carpets, drifts, and swirling mandalas. 

DANDELION-STEM POSIES

Floratillexis

“Flora (noun) - the plants of a particular region | Tillexis (verb) - to pick or pluck
1. The desire to pick or pluck flowers
”

When you pick a dandelion, notice the way that the stem is hollow, made up of vertical fibrous strands... If you are to run your fingernail down the dandelion stem, you will find it breaks quite cleanly in two (unlike a daisy stem, which is a much more solid thing).

Sometimes, I like to pull apart the stem of a dandelion, winding each half around my wrist until it becomes a kind of ephemeral bracelet. Other times, I will pick a bunch of small flowers and thread them into the hollow dandelion stem, making a bouquet or a posy. 

Traditionally, posies were given as gifts in the Middle Ages, and were bound with cloth or with silver to be worn around the neck or waist. My posies are bound by nature, and I leave them as gifts to be found by any wandering spirit.