*Before you do anything else, go over to Patriside’s blog and sign up for the new June Mixmania! If you participated in April, you already know how much fun it is, and if you didn’t, well, June is your lucky month! Go on, click over to Jim’s blog and sign up.

The bedding plants are all half-price at Lowe’s down here so I invested in a few more. Right now they are still reposing in the bed of Hub’s pickup truck, resting securely on the muddy remnants of the load of topsoil we bought last week. The truck bed also has a few golfballs rolling around in it, and a few silk blossoms from a bridal bouquet, but that’s another story. I’ll plant the flowers tomorrow when it stops raining and when I get home.

Actually, I think the rain will stop by morning, but I can’t do it then because I’m having lunch with a friend who looks a lot like this. Bloomington Red Lobster at 11:00; come on by and join us.

Summer before last, I bought four rosebushes at Big Lots, for $1.99 each. All four bloomed that first summer, and they were small and leggy, but beautiful. Last summer, two of the four bloomed, but they were bigger and more blossomy and really pretty. This summer, I have one living rosebush, but it is absolutely gorgeous. It’s bigger and more beautiful than any thirty-dollar rosebush in any nursery I’ve ever seen. It’s absolutely covered with huge red roses, each one perfect and fragrant. I got that for $1.98, a little time, and a few sacrifices.

When I look at that huge beautiful rosebush, I feel like the little boy who won the big fishing contest with a piece of string and a safety pin and beat out all the grown men with thousands of dollars worth of fishing gear, corporate sponsors, and big boats. Like the judge said, you just never know where the good stuff is going to come from.

Ah, the roses.

====================

In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along.

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self defense.

And every time I’ve held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose

But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break

And this is why my eyes are closed
It’s just as well for all I’ve seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows.

So I would choose to be with you
That’s if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break.

And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows. . . .

==============

My Moxy Fruvous boys always know how to say things best.

When I figure out how to post a picture, I will. I did download Flickr this afternoon but I haven’t had a chance to do anything with it.

Belle phoned today; she spent all of yesterday in San Francisco’s Chinatown and wanted to tell me all about it. She rented a car and picked up her friend and the two of them wandered Chinatown pretty much all day. That kid of mine, I’m tellin’ ya, she was born with the wanderlust and a spirit of adventure that just won’t quit. I told her I wouldn’t believe she was really there unless I saw pictures; she said she has pictures of herself, and pictures of him, and pictures of Chinatown, but no pictures of them together in Chinatown. So I say psht, a likely story.

I have my own computer back. I’m taking bets on how long it’ll work before it crashes again. Any takers?

Does anybody else out there think brownies are best when the middle is still mostly batter? You know, baked just long enough to kill any germs in the eggs, and barely solid enough to cut?

Well fine. That just leaves more for me to spoon up. I mean slice.

I have a shameful confession to make. I watched “Jersey Girl” last night. And I kind of liked it.

It was actually a really stupid movie, but I love Sweeney Todd and I love George Carlin.

Okay, maybe I didn’t really like the movie itself, just Sweeney Todd and George Carlin.

And now I’m going to go to the kitchen and spoon up the entire center of the pan of brownieshave a tiny square of brownie, finish reading my magazine, have a few diet cokes, and then come back here.

“Here,” being this sling-back canvas chair that my son threw out because the back was in shreds, but I fixed it with a piece of cut-off denim and now it’s my computer chair extraordinaire.

It’s really ugly but the canvas fits my big ass like a glove.

If fitting your ass in a glove is your idea of a good time.