Green Ceramic Birdbath

Above, one of the sample borders laid out to raise ambitions and entice imitation among gardener-visitors to Berkeley Horticultural Nursery (known to all as Berkeley Hort). Friday morning I found myself there, rather than in my office at the library – since the  campus where my library is located shuts down every year for Good Friday. We were choosing the first wave of new spring flowers for the East Bay garden of Mabel's grandma. And I particularly admired the chartreuse ceramic birdbath in the picture immediately above – but then reflected that at this point in her life my granddaughter would inevitably pull it over on top of herself – it looked to be just about her height – and intense as its charms might be, they could not justify the risk.

I thought about taking pictures of the several sets of different seedlings we planted from their six-packs – some into borders and some into pots – but all were too small to look like anything yet. Most of the annuals at the nursery looked like they had just arrived, full of juice and healthy potential. However, the calla lily border along one side of the garden was flourishing, and I did take a couple of pictures of it – pictures that prompted me to look back at the day in January 2010 when my son-in-law dug up the single unsatisfactory clump of calla lilies that existed then, redistributing them and spacing them out so they could flourish, as now they do.