Just One Basket

     I am posting this picture of the one successful container planting I have created in my lifetime because it may never happen again.  It must be like that knit/crochet thing.  The person who knits can't crochet.  The person who crochets can't knit.  Likewise, while I may experience some success with outdoor gardens, for me to put anything in a pot is to doom it to death, either instant, or slow and tortuous. (This also applies to houseplants, for which I serve only as a mortician.)  On the rare occasion that I amble through a nursery looking for something to grow in a pot or planter, I can feel the plants shrinking back, saying "Please don't pick me, don't pick me!!!"  They seem to know their days of sporting lovely blossoms on a mound of glossy green foliage are numbered if they go home with me.  I kept my expectations low when I started this basket as an accent for my porch.  I must have chosen exceptionally tolerant and forgiving plants because it has astounded and delighted me by its insistence upon, well, LIVING!!  It is a mixture of cascading bocapa, purple browallia, impatiens and a little peek of begonia.  Maybe it just likes that daughter K. gave me a framed bible verse as an accent.  Or that it is responding to sitting atop an antique N.Y.C. Wanamaker's crate that came from my grandmother.  Even if it dies the instant I hit "publish" to my blog, at the ripe old age of three months it will be the longest living arrangement I've ever had.