Petunia Ladies

Lady Petunia flower dollies.

        When I was walking in an old garden this summer where petunias had run wild until the place looked like a sheet of green summer sea with white foam-tips atop, I remembered how we children used to love to play “petunia ladies.” 

       We used to give great “flower-lady parties ’’ down in the garden, with sweet- fern seed and elderberries set out for a feast, on a palma-chienti leaf for a table. And oh, what happy times we had in dressing the “ladies!” 

       At home, Miss Petunia used to wear a plain white frock without furbelows, very sweet and becoming. But for parties there must be party-dresses. 

       We picked a blossom with a large-enough green stem—that was Miss Petunia herself in her white home frock. 

       We put her down to stand alone with her white skirt opened wide on the garden-walk. The green calyx was her little green basque with nice green tabs, such as you may see in old-time fashion pictures. 

       We stood ever so many petunia-ladies like that on the walk.

       Then we picked a great many more petunias of all sizes, and we pulled each stem and calyx off right at the open throat of the bell; and then we.dropped one of the round corollas over Miss Petunia’s head—that made one ruffle on the skirt. And so on and on, until her skirt was ruffled up to her little green waist with snowy ruffles, and then we carefully picked out the little green tabs over the last one. 

       A floret of verbena pulled from its calyx and put, corolla down, on her head gave her a hat like the one Mother Goose wears, with a high wetted crown. 

       But Lady Bernie did not always go alone to the party. 

       There were two kinds of petunias in the old garden—the wide single white ones, and the small bell-shaped red ones, and we used to dress the little red ones out in red flounces, and play they were the little girls of the stately matrons, and they went with their mothers to the party. Martha Young.

Delightful fabric dolls called Petal Pals by Ariel Appelt.

Here is her Etsy Shop.