Hugh Hollowell

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Resist By Planting Flowers

This essay published March 24, 2017

One of the most horrible things at that time was to listen on the wireless to the speeches of Hitler—the savage and insane ravings of a vindictive underdog who suddenly saw himself to be all-powerful. We were in Rodmell during the late summer of 1939, and I used to listen to those ranting, raving speeches. One afternoon I was planting in the orchard under an apple-tree iris reticulata, those lovely violet flowers… Suddenly I heard Virginia’s voice calling to me from the sitting room window: “Hitler is making a speech.” I shouted back, “I shan’t come. I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead.” – Leonard Wolf, in Downhill All The Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939

That picture up there is from my backyard – iris reticulata – planted last fall under my dogwood trees while my nation was electing a madman.

I don’t know that you have to plant flowers in order to resist – but you ought to be planting something.

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Filed Under: Self-care, Self-change Tagged With: beauty, flowers

Hugh Hollowell is a writer and speaker based in Jackson, MS. His writings have appeared in, among other places, The Washington Post, Sojourners, and Ethics Daily. He only publishes here sporadically, but does publish a weekly newsletter. Some people like it.

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Trackbacks

  1. The Hughsletter #88 – Resistance sometimes looks like flowers – The Hughsletter says:
    April 3, 2017 at 9:07 am

    […] It isn’t just about the vegetables, or the flowers, or even about chasing beauty as a means of self-care (as important as that is.) It is about creating beautiful things in defiance of a world gone mad. It’s about resisting – like this beautiful story I found about how Virginia Wolfe’s husband resisted Hitler by planting iris.  […]

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