Successes and Failures

Parrot tulips: failure. Above, the red and yellow ones. They were all eaten by rabbits. And here's the insult-to-injury part: the rabbits ate only the flowers, leaving the stalks to taunt me.

Below, the green, white and (a tiny bit of) pink variety. These were a gamble, since green flowers are iffy. I love hellebore, whose flowers are often shades of green. Still, I thought this tulip might be interesting and might be a disaster.

It's not great. See below. Not awful, but more weird than lovely. It kind of reminds me of Little Shop of Horrors.


Boris's Digestion: failure. He threw up in the sunroom today. That's enough about that.


The small, striped, pink and white tulips in the deck container? Success!


They started out mostly white, with pink streaks. Over time, though, they've deepened in color, becoming an interesting mixture of pinks and rose shades.

Also a success: Iain's birthday. We started out rough (nightmares, sick Daddy), survived lunch for a good, long nap, then soldiered through a truly spectacular afternoon tantrum. How bad?

I was on the phone with Miriam while Charles tried to put Iain in a Time Out. Just as I got off because the screaming was reaching a crisis level, Charles rushed into Iain's room. Turns out that our little mountain climber decided that Time Out could suck it.

He'd climbed up, pitched over, and fallen on his face. Ouch. But, none the worse for wear, he was still determined to scream the house down in anger (ie, no tears, just a red-faced rage worthy of Winston Churchill). It took a concerted effort, many books about trucks, promises of stickers and threats to tell Miss Donna before we restored equilibrium.

But we did. And his dinner, bath, and bedtime rituals were fine. Good, even. So we're a success because we lived through it. He's 2. 364 days from now, things should get better.