The More You Pick

My grandmother’s garden was full of flowers but our childish eagerness to pick flowers was curbed by strict instructions, “Don’t pick the flowers,” except the pansies. Pansies were different since, “the more you pick them, the more you have,”(This is true of many annuals and biennials, sort of like pre-deadheading; it stops the plant’s process of seed production).

So now that my pansies have begun blooming again, I’m taking my grandmother’s advice and making more pansies. I’ve put the cut ones in her green glass vase along with a sprig of peppermint—a frost survivor.



The sun eventually broke through the thick morning fog. Welcome sun.