Shhhhh! Don't Tell It.

I can't grow vegetables. I've tried for decades to grow tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, radishes, beets, squash, peppers, carrots, and more - and with some tiny success - but mostly with ghastly results and disappointment. And let's not even think about the Swiss chard.

But I can grow flowers and shrubs and even get rare and difficult plants to thrive, like crambe cordifolia, or the graceful Japanese maple I've been slow sculpting for ten years in the front yard in full sun (which is not supposed to work). And my true love is even better at this than I am, raising various lily species from seeds and handling finicky wildflowers like toothwort, butterfly weed, and cardinal flower.

So I've officially given up vegetable gardening, and she bought me this lovely Italian pot this year for my April birthday (which we celebrated in May, even though I was born in December - but that's another story) and these lovely flowers to plant in it. The plants droop a little, and the flowers are not very showy, but they make an interesting specimen plant. I'll have to cut those seed pods off, though, before they spread seeds all over the front walk. Wouldn't want these things to start growing in the cracks and between the flower bed stones like the balsams, forget-me-nots, cardinal flowers, and hibiscus all do. I've heard that the best time to prevent the spreading is just after the pods turn red.

>>>> Appendix de Grenouille #4 <<<<
It's Friday night, and Grenouille is going out on the town. His idea of a great date is to take a green head frog (preferably with a soft Southern accent, that drives him wild), or perhaps an exotic leopard frog (even humans understand how sexy those spots can be) to spend an evening beneath the street lamps at a big public fountain. His personal favorite is the fountain at Meredith College, because of the colored lights and the rising and falling jets. The colored spray, the girlish laughter from the dormitories, the unusually large flies of Raleigh, NC... such a romantic setting. And for the lady frogs, what could be hotter than that broad smile above a bow tie.