Planting pansies, feeling the grief

This will be a hodgepodge, I think. Maybe with some sorta theme.

I bought my winter pansies today with some violas when I saw so many butterflies and even honey bees around them. Texas temps traditionally go up and down in winter. This year more tropical, Hint. Butterflies. I can't remember seeing them in December before.

I bought some of the violas that attracted them.

I never thought that I would see
A purple poinsettia
I can tell you right now
I'd be happier if I hadn't a.

A veritable sea of poinsettias in the store the colors of a sweetgum tree gone artificial. lavender purples, oranges, golden... I wonder how many the store will sell.
The now usual pink and white were elsewhere with the original red.

Huh.

I just bought the violas, which used to come in one form. The ones I will pot mimic pansy colors, just smaller. Still spit the seeds. The clerk said the violas tolerate warmer temperatures and may last longer.

We have an organic market opening nearby. Onw thing I want to find out: are organic potatoes really that much tastier?

I have my radio and television off, and am cautious about Facebook and hide a lot of texts. I am dealing in the tragedy and don't want my grief fed. I see so many on hobby horses about gun control. Where are the hobby horses for better mental health services?

For those of us volunteering with homeless, we know very well the mental health hospital stabilizes, gives three days supplies, scrips, and dumps on the area streets. We don't have halfway houses. They go on the streets.

Not all massacres have shooters who were already noticably mentally ill. A lot have been. There were no resources. Why aren't there?

Oh, yeah. That might work out to be an entitlement.

But all the talk is about gun control. I suspect there is money to be made, somehow.

I don't know what I would do if I lived in Newton. Would I actually go to that many funerals?

I grieve. I plant my pansies, my violas. I delight in the butterflies.

I live. I continue to live. And don't we all?