Solstice flora

Aha! I've figured out a way to put a picture up at the top of this page, and lo: the gentiana verna. Probably not all that appropriate for this season, since it doesn't do cold very well, but it's been my favorite flower for years--they grow wild all over the Burren, in Ireland, where I lived and worked for a while. When I headed back to the USA for graduate school, I tucked several of them in books and in my passport to bring the color home, but none of them survived the journey. Now I'm hellbent on growing one this next spring in this distinctly nonIrish, nonlush climate, because that color is worth all sorts of crimes against nature.