I have got to stop. Yesterday at the grocery store I bought a pot of lavender petunias to hang from the porch beam and five more annuals to put into one window box. I don't even know their names or whether they're compatible. What I know is "Pretty! Shiny!" So I have one window box (on the porch wall) with two violet-flowering things on either side of, get this, an orange-flowering thing. The orange flower is vaguely daisy-shaped and not Koninginnedag orange but a softer hue.
I had promised Blake that I would be home right after the grocery run and that we would spend the evening together, but instead I subjected him to another 30 minutes of cagefulness. At least he likes to be outside--and doesn't understand that much English--and the next two days are supposed to be rainy and chilly so I will certainly not garden but instead clean the house. He doesn't like the vacuum and he is scared of brooms and mops and he falls in love with rags and he is not allowed to be with me when I scrub the bathroom so it'll be another fun-packed evening for him.
After the planting (and my sternly telling myself that that's it for the season, and droolingly anticipating fall so I can plant bulbs, so that the only difference between Formigny and Keukenhof will be scale, ahem), I took pictures of the house, because I love my house and I love my garden. I was on the other sidewalk to get the whole shebang in the frame when my new neighbor walked by with her dog.
"It looks great," she said, so of course I think she has fabulous taste. My garden is one thing I can readily accept a compliment about without thinking someone is being wrongheaded or just polite.
"Are you Name?" I asked, because I had only met her once before and wasn't sure if this was the new neighbor. Yes, she was, and I repeated my name. I didn't tell her that my guess that she is New Neighbor Named X was based on her dog, whom I did remember: black and white but pointer-furred and -shaped, named Dodger.
For several months, the three pictures