...A Pocket Full of Posies

A Posy. (2016)

For a few hours Saturday morning the sense of emergency or urgency was low enough that my task list was pushed back to early in the afternoon. The moment I accepted this I walked accross to the farmer's market to seek out a Butterblock delight and as usual I cruised the perimeter to see what the flower vendors were offering.

There weren't many flowers available, only "Posies $5."

This led me to ask throughout the weekend, "What exactly is a posy.?" And this led to a simple answer: "a posy is essentially another way of saying 'bouquet." However, "posy" pre-dates "bouquet" by nearly 200 years, its first known use was in 1533, where "bouquet" doesn't show in Old French till the early 18th century.

Old French - "bouquet" - (little wood)
Old French - "bocket" - 14th century
Medival Latin - "boscus" - (grove)
Old English - "bysc" - (bush)
Germanic - "busk" - (bush, thicket)(also: busc, bosch, bos, busch)
Old Norse - "buskr"
Danish - "busk"
Old French - "busche" - (Firewood)
French - "Boise" [Idaho] - (wooded)


None-the-less, what caught my eye with the posies at the market was how they didn't seem to be planned or composed as arrangements - they were just handfuls of whatever was available.

And so, a couple hours later, I was tending the garden, looking to make use of what I had around.

​A posy. Earliest known use of the word, 1533.

A Posy