learning curve

I learned some tricks today to improve the blog. The three of you who read it may notice some changes. Asia came over, still a little croupy, and taught me how to link other blogs, how to do blogrolling and subscribe to other blogs and how to change my template. I made some wild sweet orange tea, which I think is the best orange tea there is. You can disagree with me and I won't change my mind. So I learned, slowly slowly.

There are manners associated with blogging, turns out. Silly me.

After mowing the lawn and planting more ground cover, my honey and I napped on the deck, staring up through white lilacs into pure blue sky, sweet sunlight toasting my rain-whitened face for the first time this spring. I love my backyard.

vortex

Coffee is on, my cup is full, my feet are up and the gravity of this vortex is comfortable right now. As the sun comes out, I'll get out my bike and tour the neighborhood gardens. Slow climbs and straight stretches. Asia I am not. Inertia incarnate, that's me. But I do like my bike.

I have scheduled a bus tour for my people. We will tour the rhododendren gardens. We will not get off the bus. Herding cats comes to mind.

My honey is cruising craigslist for garage sales and I think we'll go in search of stuff we don't need.

Back later same day: found some stuff. Two square cement flower pots and a set of plastic camping dishes. And an angelwing begonia. To replace the one we killed. oops.

time

Early morning, should be getting ready for work, but I do that every day. Last night we took the Canby Ferry across the river, the Willamette, I'm pretty sure, although I guess it could be the Sandy River, but I'm pretty sure it was the Willamette. It was only a buck and a quarter. Or, as the ferryman put it: a buck fifty with a twentyfive cent rebate. I will post a picture later. It only has room for 4 cars and we were the only one crossing. We had travelled out to Mollala for twin schwinns for 25 bucks and ended up with 2 drills, a buffer, a sawzall and the bikes. The guy just kept saying, "take this stuff. My friend died and I'm tired of dealing with it." Grief is grief. Like snowflakes, it affects no two people alike. I know that when my father died, my mother gave away all of our worldly goods... most notably an antique round oak table with ball-claw feet. That people took advantage of her is irritating, but it was to be her lifestyle from then on out, which was a little tough on the budding Martha Stewart in me. It was difficult to give her gifts. You'd see it the next week on a stranger who was sleeping on our floor. "Our reward is in heaven," she'd say. She really had the detachment thing down.

Writing early in the morning is like walking down a long road with lots of dark little houses along the sides. You don't really know what's inside until you cross the overgrown yard, lean across the unpruned rose bush, and peer through the window. Oh.... its just Mom.

So back to the here and now, or at least as recently as last night, we had dinner in Sellwood at a crappy Mexican restaurant that had an obscene mural of red peppers lining the women's room. Big red handpainted peppers.

I really do have a job. I really must exert enough force to extract myself from the vortex of this couch. I really must......

K&F

I was listening to a radio program last week at noon time which I sometimes do to get out of the nuthouse and into the ohsointellectual space provided by NPR. Some guy was talking about writing. And you know me, anything about writing BUT writing is of monumental interest to me. He had written a book about writing, which is sort of like actually writing, and it was kind of an expanded nanowrimo thing: take this year to write your book (or something) I'm sure it is wonderful. And he said the thing they all say: write every day. HE suggested a 600 word minimum, and even on vacations. And that is a sentence, and that is the book. And it has been said a thousand times before, best, I believe, by Anne Lamott who said something to the effect of this: the only thing standing in the way of finishing the book is all that pesky writing. Yes. And the thing for me is this: I don't count blogging. And yet it is all I do right now, and I like it. It is, like Roy pointed out in his very good blog that I haven't read until the past few days because I stay in my own little world where I know people will be kind to me, that blogging is like letter writing. I used to write letters every day. Every single dsy. I wrote them to best friends, to aunts, to boyfriends in jail, to pen pals, to my brothers. I was a letter writer. 13 pages sometimes; and I shopped for the perfect stationary at Hallmark stores and as time progressed and I found more expensive things to spend my money on, I wrote on scraps of notebook paper -- still my favorite: thin lined -- and I wandered the streets and gutters around cheap motels in search of a pencil because I feared the permanence of ink. And now this public domain.... nearly four years into it and it took me a very long time to be willing to hit the publish button and send out these letters to no one, these rants and baseless commentary on my quiet little life.


I don't know who took this picture or where it is, but if I lived there they couldn't get me.











So, I will learn to link to other bloggers, because they are out there too, and I will be a part of a community, and I will write my letters to no one.

66 dollars

I just planted $66.00 worth of flowers. At pony-pack prices, that's a whole lot of posies. I planted snow drops and red-carpet steppables (you can walk on them, although I hope not to) and grace ward lithodora and trailing lobelia and geraniums and pansies and verbena and one regal begonia. It had better be regal for 7 bucks. And sweet peas. I love sweet peas. I planted a big pot of sweet peas and planted sweet pea seeds all around it just for insurance.

willow fencing









I will post a picture of all this crap just for you. I pulled dandelions by hand and edged the front retaining wall bed with a willow-stick fence. I didn't get out my dandelion puller, although I have one. I use that for the big jobs. WE don't have any dandelions in OUR backyard. It is pure, pristine, all green sod--pure grass. My dandelion puller is great, though. It is a machine I bought when swearing off roundup, but I've backslid since and poisoned stuff with limited remorse. I'll say this and reap the backlash, but I don't really know if we'll be around to reap the rewards of our collective bad behavior, Al. Probably some metaphoric Korean gunslinger will wipe us all out in the nick of time, just as the level of roundup in the water supply reaches tasteable levels. Toxic? Who cares? Does it TASTE good?

I know this is only my blog, and I know I have neglected social or political commentary. I know. I know. But this recent killing spree, this most recent catastrophe of oversight and neglect (I won't attempt to say of or by whom) is just further evidence to support my belief that the human race has yet to prove its adaptivity.

I hate politics.

I just plant my garden and love my husband and miss my son and feed this new family of mine who is one more today with a grandson, Michael, here for dinner and fishing on the Willamette in the morning. And during the week, I make money by watching over 15 little gray-headed women plus Abe. Abe is the only man, unless we move Sam in. I don't think they would get along. Sam is too pushy. Abe is a softie. The ladies, some of them, are dying this Saturday afternoon. I make no predictions. This isn't the lottery. Not an event but a process, to quote often trite self-help jargon...But Alice and Pansy are fading slowing into the west. Godspeed.

blueskys

On the way to the beach yesterday I prayed for good weather. I actually said a prayer. The forecast was for drizzle and me without a coat, thus the devout-ish behavior: oh, jesus, don't let it rain on me. As we came through the pre-dawn darkness into a clear bluesky morning, I felt comforted by the great beyond. Although, the notion that there would be could be specific cosmic interest in my personal dryness is extremely unlikely, I am comforted by these beliefs that I cannot undo. But I am also betting I wasn't the only one out there praying for no rain in this sodden city.

I love it here. I love our sod. Wait, I'll go use my honey's computer to post some pictures, or wait, maybe I'll try to load some on my flash drive and put them on this one. I can't figure out shit. There. I did it, as you can see.


the backyard















the new fence
















the sod















So, I pounded the sand in search of the now-elusive razor clam. We got 24, and they were big, so it was like a double limit (15 each=30), really.

It is a bit cumbersome to hunt for clams. You have to carry the gun (see previous posts) and a blunt-ended stick to pound the sand with, like a shovel handle.

Did I ever tell you the story about my old Dodge Polara that I drove for a thousand years and every time I turned off the ignition I had to hit the starter with a shovel handle to get it to start again? Yes? No? Nevermind. That was another life. I'm talking about clams, here. These connections in my head go on and on.... kind of like asha's diner/dive dendrites.

So, there I was, pounding the sand in search of the dime-sized hole with a tiny water spout that is the tell, the "show", of the clam's hidey-hole. Then comes the difficult part: it takes two hands to run the shovel, so you have to do something with the stick. AND, because time is of the essence, you have to be quick. You can't, like, set the stick on dry sand and go back for the clam because: a. you don't have time -- these guys move fast once you've tamped the sand and woke them up. and b. all sand looks pretty much the same. Run and set the stick down, come back and voila! no clam... So, I dropped the stick and went for the clam, stick be damned--and all this in the midst of rushing surf. I still maintain that clamming would be alot easier if you could just get the ocean to lay off for a minute. In and out, in and out, in and out. It is relentless and inconsiderate. Water that won't hold still.

So, there I still was. And I have tossed the stick, got the clam (hooray!) and now, gone back for my stick. But it has been washed away. I begin to search the beach, the ever-moving surf, for my stick. It is a wooden shovel handle with a green metal end. I see an old man carrying two sticks and I walk toward him. I say, "I lost my stick." He ignores me. I think, oh, it must not be MY green ended stick. It must be HIS green ended stick. I am gullible that way. I keep walking. I think old people would never steal. I think old fishermen are intrinsically good, although there is no basis in reality or history for me to think this. My brother Doug is a fisherman, and I lived on the docks in Charleston for too long and hung out with fishermen and woke up out to sea with fishermen who did not have my best interest at heart (although at that time, my best interest was a somewhat fluid concept) anyway....

I wander around in the surf, wasting precious time. It is now an incoming tide, after all, and the clam beds are now being covered inch by inch, minute by minute, and I only have 8 clams and can get an honest limit of 15, and have come all this way and don't want to go home without my fair share. So, I can't find it. My stick. My husband notices, says, "That guy has it." Same guy. So I walk over to him and ask in the nicest possible way,

"Did you just pick that stick up?"
He ignores me again.
"Hey," (I'm closer now. Its my stick alright.) "Did you just pick up that stick?"
He glares at me.
"Did you lose it?" he asks.
"Yes," I tell him.
He flings it aside in the surf and walks off.
I have to lunge for it.
I was close enough to reach it, but he just flung it and splashed off.
Meanie.

It was then I noticed his bag of clams: a giant net bag dragging behind him with probably 50 huge clams in it. He must not have got the memo about the 15 razor limit.


the take

















What a prick. I don't usually use that language for old guys, but I'm making an exception this once. Actually, he probably had a commercial tag, and has an attitude about tourists. But I ain't no fucking tourist. I live here. I was born here. I deserve.

So, here I am this fine friday morning, skipping work. I love to skip work the way I used to love to skip school. I hate obligation. It is the essence of my disorder. I am going to take Sid to the vet to get his rabies shot, his nails done (what about mine?) and a long walk in between so he'll forget all the meanness of this civilized and disease-ridden world.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

mafioso

I drove to a nameless nursing home today to interview a person who has Alzheimer's disease and see if I want him to come and live out his days at my place. The wisdom of interviewing someone with Alzheimer's escapes me, but I'm always up for an adventure.

I remember walking through the halls of a nursing home back in the day, and this woman, this shell person-- nothing left but paper skin stretched thin over sharp bones, draped into her wheelchair sort of like a pie crust before it has been pressed into place, stick arms flung outward, legs splayed -- said, in a sandpaper voice, "If this is a rest home, why can't I get any rest?"

And now, perhaps heeding her comment, they are called nursing homes or rehab centers, but walking through the halls, little has changed. One thing. One thing has changed. They don't tie people up anymore. They (we) seat them in wheelchairs, pin a magnetic device on the back of their shirt, attach the other end to the wheelchair, and tell them to stay put. Of course, they, without benefit of memory, do not, and a godawful alarm goes off, scaring the shit out of the poor little person who has no idea what generated it. But it does not keep them seated. They rise, then they fall, break a hip and keep the place in business. Now, I know it seems mean to tie them up, but you may see the sense in it. And the rule is, if a person can release a seat belt on their own, they can wear one. But the point is, if they can think, they don't need one. A mystery, to be sure.

Anyway, it is curious to me, the notion of rehab for people with dementia. I wonder if, when I have dementia (I assume I will), if they can finally teach me to do my exercises.

So, I interviewed Sam. His wife had come to see me, told me she had been taking care of him at home for years and, like so many wives, he was getting to be too much. Sam was a bigshot. A real mover and shaker, with buttloads of money, wheelin' and dealin'. Now he has become too much, hard to handle, verbally abusive, still thinks he's running the show. But this time, he has walked away in the middle of the night and fallen down. And that is what usually happens. Before "the event" the wife almost always says something like: "It isn't that bad yet." But it is. Usually. And once they land on my doorstep, some of the denial is broken. and some bones.

So I walk into the room, and Sam, friendly guy, says, "Hey, come sit over here." So I do. But here's the thing: He's tiny. He's this little bitty ninety year old shell man in a wheelchair. He couldn't kick his own ass. So, I sit down with Sam and his best friend, who's name is also Sam. Who looks like a mafia hit man. Friend starts to talk to me and Sam yells: "Hey! Shutup for five minutes. I'll do the talking." And he has the voice. The man voice. I say, "Sounds like you're a guy who's used to having people do what they say." He turns to me, nodding. "I'm the boss," he says. I nod. "So I see." And it kind of goes on like that for awhile. I tell him his wife has been to see me. He says, "Yeah. She's the scout. She reports to me." Which, acutally, seems pretty true. So, I try to ask him questions to test his memory, but his friend thinks I really want the answers and tells me the facts. I don't care about the facts. I know what I need to know. I say, "How long you been here?" Sam says, "Six months." Friend says, "It's only been a coupla weeks," which I already know. Sam doesn't let him hardly get the words out before he yells, "HEY! YOU'RE JUST A GUEST. NOW KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT FOR FIVE MINUTES AND ACT LIKE ONE." I smile. This is better than TV, and I like TV.

So, I'm not sure I'll take Sam. He would be fun, but I'm not sure he'd fit in with my little harp-singing-gray-headed ladies. If I had strippers and bouncers, maybe, but that just ain't what's going on.

Pearl got two cabbage patch dolls today. She named them Roger and Tulip.

vonnegut

I wrote this poem a long time ago, maybe 30 years. It rhymes.

Cat's Cradle: For Newt Honniker

I live in a cat's cradle murmurring lies
rock me to sleep as I feed on goodbyes
motion perpetual take me away
silent as morning comes bringing the day
faithlessly dreaming I sleep the day long
sunlight surrender to right nor to wrong
but trades for the moon and stars, absence of light
and breezes that carry me into the night
waking, I'm tangled and helpless and new
my cradle in ruins; my feelings untrue
so weave me another one
feed me a lie
capture me endlessly
murmur goodbye.

jbs
I loved that book.

what i don't know

...could fill these pages.

Tribute to Kurt Vonnegut. This is my favorite Vonnegut quote:
"There are two kinds of people in the world:
the ones you know and the ones you don't know."

exerpt from Cat's Cradle.

It has been a humbling week--one preceded by statements of such hubris, such unmitigated certainty as this:
"Pansy is dying."

And she is. As I am. As we are. As we do. Just not today.

Pansy IS dying, in the way that any 96 year old woman with end stage Alzheimer's Disease, is dying. She is dying more predictably, say, than I am (if you don't look too close at my metabolic profile or driving habits.) But I meant it. I said, as succinctly as Bill Murray in Ghostbusters said it, "This chick is toast." I meant right now. Pansy is going to die now. A week at the most. And I know this because I have such vast experience with death. I know so much. I am a professional. I know this shit inside and out.

And I was wrong.

We pros have those kind of lotteries. We guess. We suppose. We think we know. We think we know how long it takes in the absence of water. We think we know how people will do. But we don't. We don't know shit for sure. But sometimes, sometimes, we use our outloud voice when we oughtn't to. And people are listening.

The funny thing is that I feel like I failed because she lived. Lives. Lives on in spite of the tragic things that happen to people who don't know they are sitting up and can't even put their hands out to block a fall. I feel like I stole a moment from her family, who are so ready to release her to the great yawning gasp that we call the other side, that I beckoned for the reaper on her behalf and did so without her permission.

I know I am making way too much of this, but its my blog. Nobody blamed me. I'm the only one on my back. I only hope I can recall, in that moment when some other family is looking to me for certainty, that I don't have any. That I have experience, but no answers. That death is private and unknowable.

So Pansy lives on, to die another day.

happy easter

I started my day sitting next to a friend who is a heathen, as are many of my friends, dissing easter. It is common knowlege that I like Jesus and we have a good natured banter about all that, but it does wear thin. I don't get why non-christians celebrate easter, and to her credit, she does not. I like the fact of the resurrection, of my own resurrection, of our collective resurrection. It is a message of hope, and I need that. Spring.

The backyard is covered with cherry blossoms. The new sod looks as though a snow storm just ended. Maybe we could make a blossom man. Or lay down and make blossom angels, but we aren't supposed to walk on the sod.

I have a headache that I have had for about three weeks. It is actually a situation caused, I believe, by the position required to play the harp. I am not accustomed to holding my arms up and out and plucking and concentrating for an hour. It is definitely a learning curve. It is a pretty bad head/neck/back ache, though, and I hope it passes. I can't think to write.

home theatre

We walked two blocks to the Clinton Street Theatre and saw Black Snake Moan. Samuel Jackson and Christina Ricci. She is so odd. But, I liked the movie and love having a theatre so close to home. It isn't a good theatre, and the sound is pretty bassy and hard to understand, and the decor is post apocalyptic, but other than that, the popcorn was pretty good. Three bucks for a movie and 2.50 for popcorn is about right. They don't pretend to be anything they're not.

It was a housework day, and I got out of cooking Easter dinner for mother in law. I said, "I don't want to cook or do dishes." I'd like, for once, to have a holiday myself. I like holidays. I hate housework. Hate it. But, I got through it. I did the dishes, swept and mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors, changed the sheets, vacuumed, dusted and did like four loads of laundry. No wonder I'm tired. Kurt put sod down in the backyard yesterday and I guess that gets him off the hook for this weekend. But not Nicole.

So, its Easter Saturday, and I miss my son as usual at holiday time. But it is not the adult boy who I miss. Its the Easter basket, egg-finding, blonde-headed little boy who always knew where to look, who was famous in the family for saying, "This is the worst Easter I've ever had," when his soda was flat and warm, and now we all say it when anything goes mildly wrong on a holiday. I remember growing up in a house on Peach Street -- 1314 South Peach -- funny the details you remember.... and we would always find an egg the next year, in the gutter, in the garden tool shed, some nasty remnant of Easters past. I love coloring eggs, and have never not done it until this year. Last year you can look at the post and see that I did it by myself. The eggs were so pretty. But there are no kids anymore, and it just doesn't make sense. I may do it anyway. We'll see. I do enjoy them.

We drove to Newberg to see the monk last night, took the motorcycle. It was a beautiful night and a great ride and the monk is good but getting very old. I like to see him during holy week because he calls it that, and it is that for him. He says it like it is a busy part of his work week, as though there is increased pressure to be holy as part of his job description. I'm sure there is alot to do with all the visitors to the monasatery and all that. When he sees us, he blinks his eyes and says, "wow" like we are a vision. He thinks K looks like a movie star. So do I.

another night

A new woman moved in. She is from Austrailia. She is a gardener. These are the things I know about her. What I don't know is so much more. It makes me consider what is known about me. (mememememememememememememe) But really. If I go nuts. Or when. Or more to the point: when they discover I am nuts, where will you find the cookie crumbs that will lead you to who I am? How would you know, for instance, that I hate lotion that smells like fruit or baked goods? Or that ballons scare me and I hate the feel of a butterfly on my arm? Would you see that I had painted a wing and use that information to decorate my room with angels, not knowing I can't stand angels? Would you know never to comb my hair when its wet and that I hate tight clothes and rarely need a sweater? Would you know better than to sneak up behind me or startle me? That I like to sleep in a TB cold room but no matter how hot it is I need a sheet. Could you ever know how much my son means to me or what a miracle my life has been? And if all of this trip is documented, who will read it outloud so the ones who do the work will know.

Today, the Austrailian Gardner cried and cried. She was so lost all day, and I had no way to lead her home. I didn't know, for instance, that at one point in her life she had lost her son -- lost track of him -- and that the young man she was looking for this morning was him. It took most of the day to figure it out. She can't really find her words anymore. She knows what she wants to say, but can neither speak or understand spoken words. She can read, and so I write.... Finally, she said the word Presbyterian, and I knew who to call. I called her church friend and she came and we unravelled the mystery. In the meantime, I went out and bought some geraniums. When in doubt, plant shit.

There is a priest where I work. He lives on the other side, the normal side, the (mostly) undemented side. I watch him for a couple of reasons: holy men interest me, devout people interest me, anyone who can maintain faith in the presence of reason interest me. Not that these are reasonable times. Hardly. I have an innate mistrust of priests because I was raised by a Pentecostal mother who told me the Pope was the Antichrist, and priests his handmaidens, so to speak. So, my interest in them is complex. I give them wide berth, even at deathbeds -- and you know me and deathbeds. I'm never quite sure what they're up to or how they figure they have more of a connection than I do. But this guy, he showed up for Rosetta and she wasn't even Catholic. He sits on his wheeled walker on days when the sun shines, off to one side of the sidewalk in the grass. He faces the sun, eyes closed. His tolerance for time is impressive, for quiet, for solitude. For prayer.

Off to bed. I practiced my harp, so can lay down without guilt. I am learning to accompany myself with my left hand and play melody with my right. Now, if I can sprout two more and applaud myself, or just one to pat myself on the back, all will be well.

dylan

I am all alone. It is night and I am alone. My husband is patrolling street signs in another town, shining a flashlight on each one to make sure they still shimmer. It pays the bills--that and the mad house.

I was alone once for a long time. And now it is an absence I don't quite know how to fill. So this is what I do. Word play.

I am disturbed by song lyrics this evening. I was watching TV, nothing new, and a commercial began, the melody and lyrics of "catch the wind" (in case you don't know them as intimately as I):

In the chilly hours and minutes
of uncertainty
I long to be
in the warm hold
of your loving mind
just to feel you
all around me
and to take your hand
along the sand
ah, but I may as well
try and catch the wind.

when sundown pales the sky
I want to hide awhile
behind your smile
and everywhere I'd look
your eyes I'd find
for you to love me now
would be the sweetest thing
t'would make me sing
ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind.

Bob Dylan

I love that song. Now, I know it is the combination of those words and that music that softens my mood, that returns me to childhood--adolescence, really--days spent in hand-patched levis, cross-legged in Lithia Park, learning the melody on my first recorder, my only gift under a slim Christmas tree and the only thing that mattered to me, and what it took for my mother to make that happen...

But here's the thing........... I know I almost scared you with that sweet image, but really, that's the problem, isn't it? All of those images are used up: beaches, sunsets, romance, all that shit. It is so fucking difficult to find an original metaphor these days, these days where fist and bone have replaced heart and soul. And for those of us who put words together and take them apart for fun and torture, we are damned lucky if we can say what we mean and mean what we say, dodge trite and stay true. If we can say that which almost certainly has been said better, but not by us, and twist it one more time for the record, well good luck. The few the proud, the verbose. But we are many, now, and the metaphors show some wear here in blogland.

It was beautiful when he wrote it, and when I heard it and knew it for poetry, and was captured.

fuschia saturday

How it really went was not quite so nice as expected. It was a perfect morning. K went fishing, I dinked around the house, all that. When he came home it was time to go do the free dirt thing. So off we went. Earlier in theday I had run out to buy sphagnum moss to line three of my baskets. In case you didn't know, moss turns to peat after awhile and is not so great to line the baskets anymore. (But is great for soil, so saved it all and gave asia a bag of it. As I was out looking for moss at the local overpriced garden store, I found two divider trellis pieces and although they had "sold" signs on them, the signs were not convincing. They looked like they had been sitting in the same place for quite a while. I found a garden store worker and asked what the story was. She found out that somebody had said hey I want those I'll be right back with the money and never came back. So the story was that I could have them for half price. Yay. So home I went with my moss and two wooden dividers to place between our backyard and the homeless shelter next door.

It isn't really a homeless shelter, and truly, anymore there is little to complain about since the mad dogs who used to live there got kicked out. Now, there are just poor crazy people who need a small place to hide out in. They don't talk much at all, don't open their curtains, don't own vehicles, and don't stay up late, so why am I bitching? Anyway, the wooden dividers are really nice and clean up the fence line well.

So, back to the story... K gets home and off we go to Freddy's. We find a parking place clear across the parking lot and load a basket to the hilt with all of our pots and truck them over to the garden department. All the fuschias are gone.
GONE? This can't be. Last year I had to settle for petunias in my back yard pots and I never really got over it. I have nothing against petunias, but they are kind of leggy and sticky and I wanted fuschias and that is that. So we had the Hawthorne store call the Hollywood store (not the real Hollywood, it is a section of portland which doesn't resemble Hollywood in the least so I don't know what the story is there) and they had TONS of fuschias left. Hooray. We hopped back in the truck after re-loading all of the pots, and making sure the moss wouldn't blow out as we travelled beyond our neighborhood. As we pulled into the Hollywood Freddy's, the skys parted and a torrential downpour began. Ah, springtime. Ah, April showers. But it was still March. We charged through the rain, sidestepping rivulets and near washouts in the parking lot. These are the kinds we got:

8 bright purple (white with purple center)
4 royal airforce academy (pink with purple center)
4 blue eyes (magenta with dark blue center)
4 pink marshmallow (white with hint of pink)
3 lena (creamy white with pink center)
and two others I can't remember.

I'll post pictures as they bloom. I usually fill the pots with other hangy things like trailing lobelia and allysum.

I understand that by not linking to other blogs that I am not doing my part for blogland. I feel bad about that. Will mend my ways in two weeks.