12 April—In my excitement and horticultural ignorance, I may have been rather too quick in calling the little blossoms that miraculously appeared on Easter Sunday and Monday pansies. Someone who knows about these things has suggested that my hardy little pet flowers (that still flourish, by the way), being rather small for pansies, are actually Johnny-jump-ups.

I’d never heard of Johnny-jump-ups, so I naturally googled the term. And my expert must be correct, even though I couldn’t find any pictures of Johnny-jump-ups the very same colors as my little miracles.

It seems that Johnny-jump-ups, besides being baby jumpers (without the hyphens, a trade name of swinging devices for little brats), are described as flowers that look like small pansies. So I wasn’t far off. They’re defined as “any of various pansies or violets with small flowers”; “any of various small-flowered cultivated pansies”; and “any of various American violets.”

Comprehensively: “Also known as viola, wild pansy and heart’s ease, the johnny jump up is actually a relative of the pansy. The difference between johnny jump ups and pansies is mostly one of size. Pansies have much larger flowers, although they look very similar. On the other hand, johnny jump ups produce many more flowers per plant and are much more heat tolerant, making johnny jump up planting even more ideal.” Planting indeed, my Johnny-jump-ups were absolutely and totally spontaneous.

Capitalization and hyphenation appear to depend upon the source, so don’t sweat it.

But violets? Yes indeed, because pansies are in fact members of the genus Viola, in turn part of the Violet family, Violaceae. Something else to forget.

To complicate and elevate matters, today is the penultimate day of Passover, the celebration of Jewish Juneteenth, as chronicled in the Book of Exodus. But go back even further, to the Book of Genesis, and you find yourself in the Garden of Eden. And what happened there? That’s right, Adam was created from “the dust of the earth,” and then from Adam came Eve.

So doesn’t it stand to reason that my two miraculous little Johnny-jump-ups should be called Adam and Eve? I mean, didn’t little Adam come from the dust of the earth? And didn’t little Eve come from little Adam?

And now, as you see in the picture below, Adam and Eve got together—Adam on top, of course—and, “Viola!” (as Julia Child was fond of saying, and generically serendipitous in this instance), as of this morning, we have their first-born, little Cain. Will little Cain have brothers (and sisters) not to keep? Anybody’s guess.

But one thing is evident: little Cain, being four inches away from and smaller than little Adam and little Eve, must be a shrinking violet . . .