Also: pansies and jam

I meant to include two other items in my post last night: pansies and jam.

For years Pete and I found pansies frustrating. They seemed so delicate -- they died no matter where we put them. Finally we learned from the lady at the garden shop that everybody's pansies die when it gets hot. It's just part of living in Gladlyville: pansies can't hack the August heat here, even if you put them in the shade. It wasn't a gardening failure; it was a choosing-to-live-in-this-dumb-Midwestern-climate reality. This year we went back to the garden shop after the weather cooled off again, maybe in early October, and bought a bunch more pansies. Like, a BUNCH. We put some of them in our new shade bed in the backyard, and some of them in pots flanking the front steps, and a few more in the north beds. It felt mildly extravagant to spend $25 on annuals that seemed unlikely to live very long, but they were irresistibly pretty. 

It turns out that pansies are not actually delicate. They are still blooming! In December! After multiple hard frosts! We keep saying, "Oh, that's probably it for the pansies," and then the sun comes out and they rally once more. We bought them in every color: velvety purple and cheerful yellow and deep wine-red and even black. They make me improbably happy.

For years and years we had a Lego Advent calendar. There used to be elaborate rules about which kid could open which window, and complicated barter negotiations about the contents of those windows. And then (sniffle) all my children got too big for Lego Advent calendars. This year, for the first time since the LAST CENTURY, we have a different Advent calendar. It has tiny pots of jam, one for each day. I do not know why Amazon is now charging more than twice what I paid for this Advent calendar back in October. I would not suggest buying it at the current price. But I would be happy to buy it again at the lower price. We have all enjoyed our tiny pots of jam, and the quantities are just right -- enough for everybody to sample (a reminder: we only have four people living here right now), not so much that we're buried in tiny pots of weird jam. Out of the first 13 days, 12 jams were tasty and appealing and one was weird enough to be funny. That's a pretty good ratio, I'd say.