Erysimum

In our chapel borders, we have growing, and now blooming, some wall flowers. Gardens Illustrated has the following to say:

Erysimum is one of the most generous plants any gardener can grow. Also known as wallflowers, erysimum flower from early spring and can linger long after Midsummer's Day. Some forms are sweetly scented, too, their fragrance hovering somewhere between parma violet and mellow honey. Some of our loveliest wallflowers are chameleons, with flowers that seem to shimmer between violet, butterscotch and brick pink.

A beautiful description of a beautiful flower. Yet it was that first claim that struck me; never before I have read of a flower being described as generous. For flowering so long, and offering such fine scent, the writer is well justified in praising the plant’s generosity.

Someone asked me for advice this week. They wanted to support someone financially, and solicited my opinion. It is of course rather easy to spend other folks’ money rather than our own, but I suggested that, as a rule, it was better to err on the side of generosity than parsimony. Writes Solomon:

The generous soul will be made rich,

And he who waters will also be watered himself. Proverbs 11:25