The amusements and fancies of children, when connected with flowers, are
always pleasing, being generally the conceptions of innocent minds
unbiased by artifice or pretense; and their love of them seems to spring
from a genuine feeling and admiration—a kind of sympathy with objects as
fair as their own untainted minds; and I think it is early flowers which
constitute their first natural playthings; though summer presents a
greater number and variety, they are not so fondly selected. We have our
daisies strung and wreathed about our dress; our coronals of orchises
and primroses, our cowslip balls, etc.; and one
application of flowers at this season I have noticed, which, though
perhaps it is local, yet it has a remarkably pretty effect, forming, for
the time, one of the gayest little shrubs that can be seen. A small
branch or long spray of the whitethorn, with all its spines uninjured,
is selected; and on these, its alternate thorns, a white and blue
violet, plucked from their stalks, are stuck upright in succession,
until the thorns are covered, and when placed in a flower-pot of moss,
it has perfectly the appearance of a beautiful vernal flowering dwarf
shrub, and as long as it remains fresh is an object of surprise and
delight.