thegreenishthumb

[thegreenishthumb]

Plants I Like #1: Horned Violets, Viola cornuta

Horned Violets are fantastic flowering annuals (also grow as perennials) in the Violaceae family that have really taken off in popularity. I learned about these in a gardening course recently and I have been seeing them in gardening beds in my community ever since.

These flowers are native to the Pyrenees mountains and northern Spain. They have a few different common names and from a brief internet search, the genus alone has over 500 species with a vast diversity in appearence and growth habit. They have six-petaled flowers that are typically some combination of purple, white, or pink but there are also other starkly-colored cultivars. These violets are commonly mistaken for pansies (which is honestly pretty fair because they are in the same genus), but pansies are much larger when compared side-by-side. I also found that basically everything is a viola (the genus name) but some individual cultivars are called pansies...science is real great at naming things.

I've read in a few sources that they prefer cooler weather and to be grown in moist, well-draining soils, so might not be the best summertime pick, but they are so pretty and are a cool groundcover to incorporate to any landscape!

A fun fact I like about these is that their flowers are edible and are a common culinary garnish!

Sources:

https://www.thespruce.com/growing-violas-1402895

https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/viola-cornuta/

[thegreenishthumb]

Gonna start a series on plants I find interesting or are popular on the market at the moment. I'm open to suggestions if there's somethign that interests other folks and they want to learn more about it. I may also break down plant-isms and popular plant families because why not.

[thegreenishthumb]

Posting anxiety

How do y'all just post nowadays? I get nervous just thinking about posting photos or reposting text posts or anything online. Are my pictures okay? Is my caption good and not dumb? How will my audience perceive me and is that the image I want to put online? I don't know.

I think there are so many people around me who have curated their image (and have even created personas) based on their social media, and the idea of that expectation can be immensely pressuring. Then again, there is a sense of anonymity online that I feel can be freeing and allow for authentic connection. On the flip side of that, we are all so chronically online that your digital presence can be easily found by employers (for example) and screw you over in the physical world for better or for worse. There is just so much out there that you start to lose control of what information about yourself is out there. Wild.

I can't be the only person that feels this way and if I am...it be like that. I'm trying to be better about posting because I want to and not caring what happens after I do.

TLDR: Posting online makes me anxious which is ironic because that's exactly what I'm doing right now (and I am anxious about this lol)