Things Are Changing.....

After our long day yesterday, Michael and I decided to slow down some. The 6-5-4-3-2-1 countdown to days we have left here in Switzerland is going faster than we thought.

Walked through the main street in Interlaken and noticed there are fewer people than there were last week.

The air is crisp in the morning. A light jacket is needed if you leave the house early.

Walking by the Höhematte we noticed cows grazing in the field. That doesn't happen often. Well, I don't remember it happening for years. On the other side of the grassy area, the paragliders corkscrew down to the area across from the Victoria- Jungfrau Grand Hotel and Spa.

The Summer flowerbeds are being replaced with hardier Fall plants. Pansies are the predominant plant being planted.

Pansies are popular cool-season bedding plants, and that may be what they are best known for, but pansies are so much more.

Did you know that pansies were great cut flowers historically.

Irises and pansies share in common their color capabilities.

They bloom in red, orange, yellow, and green. “They bloom in green and blue. They bloom in purple. They bloom in brown. They bloom in black. They bloom in multicolor.

Pansy varieties coming out now in Italy and Japan are bringing about shades, textures and fragrance that hadn’t been available for a long time. Some even smell like chocolate or honey.

Many pansies have the familiar “blotch and whiskers” pattern. Some people say pansy varieties must have this pattern, or at the very least must have color, to attract pollinators.

They’re edible. They’re a good people plant too.

"The name "pansy" is derived from the French word pensée, "thought", and was imported into Late Middle English as a name of Viola in the mid-15th century, as the flower was regarded as a symbol of remembrance. The name "love in idleness" implied the image of a lover who has little or no other employment than to think of his beloved."

"The name "heart's-ease" came from St. Euphrasia, whose name in Greek signifies cheerfulness of mind. The woman, who refused marriage and took the veil, was considered a pattern of humility, hence the name "humble violet".^"

"In Scandinavia, Scotland, and Germany, the pansy is known as the "stepmother" flower; an aitiological tale about a selfish stepmother is told to children while the teller plucks off corresponding parts of the blossom. The German name is Stiefmütterchen (lit. 'little stepmother'); in the German version of the tale, the lower petal represents the stepmother, the large upper petals represent her daughters, and the small upper petals represent her stepdaughters. The Czech name for the flower, maceška, also means "little stepmother" and is said to derive from the flower's resemblance of an evil woman's sullen face. In Slovenian, the flower is instead identified with an orphan. In Italy, the pansy is known as flammola (little flame).

"In Israel, the pansy is called Amnon Ve'Tamar, (אמנון ותמר), named after the rape story of Amnon and Tamar, in which Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar. The name was suggested by Shaul Tchernichovsky."

"The pansy's connection to pious humility is mentioned by Harte, who writes: "From brute beasts humility I learned;/And in the pansy’s life God’s providence discerned". Gifford evokes both Christian and classical undertones, writing how "Pansies – still,/More blest than me, thus shall ye live/Your little day, – and when ye die,/Sweet flowers! The grateful muse/Shall give a verse". Smart proposes "Were it not for thee, oh sun,/Those pansies, that reclining from the bank/View through the immaculate, pellucid stream,/Their portraiture in the inverted Heaven,/Might as well change their triple boast, the white,/The purple, and the gold".^"

"On account of its popularity in both society and its recurring appearances in Romantic poetry, a variety of new nicknames for the flower began to circulate. Dorothea Lynde Dix proclaims that “Perhaps no flower (not excepting even the queenly rose) claims to be so universal a favorite, as the viola tricolor; none currently has been honored with so rich a variety of names, at once expressive of grace, delicacy and tenderness.” Many of these names play on the whimsical nature of love, including “Three Faces under a Hood,” “Flame Flower,” “Jump Up and Kiss Me,” “Flower of Jove,” and “Pink of my John."

"In Hamlet, Ophelia distributes flowers with the remark, "There's pansies, that's for thoughts" (IV.5). Other poets referencing the pansy include Ben Jonson, Bernard Barton, Michael Drayton, Edmund Spenser, William Wakefield, and William Wordsworth."

"Nathaniel Hawthorne published his last literary effort, an unfinished piece, entitled Pansie, a Fragment, sometimes called Little Pansie, a fragment in 1864."

"D. H. Lawrence's Pansies: Poems by D. H. Lawrence was published in 1929, and Margaret Mitchell originally chose Pansy as the name of her Gone with the Wind heroine, but settled on Scarlett just before the book went into print."

"The word "pansy" has indicated an effeminate male since Elizabethan times and its usage as a disparaging term for a man or boy who is effeminate, as well as for an avowedly homosexual man, is still in use. The word "ponce" (which has now come to mean a pimp) and the adjective "poncey" (effeminate) also derive from "pansy".

"Because its name means "thought", the pansy was chosen as a symbol of Freethought and has been used in the literature of the American Secular Union. Humanists use it too, as the pansy's current appearance was developed from the heartsease by two centuries of intentional crossbreeding of wild plant hybrids. The specific colors of the flower – purple, yellow, and white – are meant to symbolize memories, loving thoughts and souvenirs, respectively. The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) uses the pansy symbol extensively in its lapel pins and literature. The flower has long been associated with human manner, as one man cleverly stated: “Nature sports as much with the colors of this little flower as she does with the features of the human countenance.”

"In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the "juice of the heartsease" is a love potion and "on sleeping eyelids laid, will make a man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees." (II.1)."

"In the language of flowers, a honeyflower and a pansy left by a lover for his beloved means, "I am thinking of our forbidden love". In 1858, the writer James Shirley Hibberd wrote that the French custom of giving a bride a bouquet of pansies (thoughts) and marigolds (cares) symbolized the woes of domestic life rather than marital bliss.^"

"A German fable tells of how the pansy lost its perfume. Originally pansies would have been very fragrant, growing wild in fields and forests. It was said that people would trample the grass completely in eagerness to pick pansies. Unfortunately, the people’s cows were starving due to the ruined fields, so the pansy prayed to give up her perfume. Her prayer was answered, and without her perfumed scent, the fields grew tall, and the cows grew fat on the fresh green grass.^"

"American pioneers thought that “a handful of violets taken into the farmhouse in the spring ensured prosperity, and to neglect this ceremony brought harm to baby chicks and ducklings.” On account of its place in American hearts, a game called “Violet War” also arose. In this game, two players would intertwine the hooks where the pansy blossoms meet the stems, then attempt to pull the two flowers apart like wishbones. Whoever pulled off the most of their opponent’s violet heads was proclaimed the winner. Young American settlers also made pansy dolls by lining up the pansy flower “faces”, pasting on leaf skirts and twig arms to complete the figures.^"

The roses are starting to bud.

The Jungfrau keeps losing more and more snow each week we have been here.

Hang gliders usually don't land in the Höhematte.

Yes, I have been using the buses more often this year. Michael and I needed to get to the Interlaken West train station quickly so we took the bus from this location which we have never done before.

First time seeing a cleaning cart being pushed. Normally, it is a motorized cart.

The last time we were at Kambly, it was so hot outside that we couldn't purchase the chocolate biscuits (cookie) because the chocolate would have melted before we traveled to where we are staying.. Today, there were a few different biscuits for our tasting pleasure.

New flavor to try

Took a regional train from Bern to Thun via Belp.

My eyes are closing s I will say good night.