Watching Our Flowers Grow

[porphyry]

I love to garden. I now mostly grow flowers although I used to plant large vegetable gardens too. (I would like to go back to doing that, but that would be a huge project because there's so much wildlife around here I would have to devise some clever way to keep the deer, rabbits, raccoons, possums, squirrels, foxes, etc. etc. out of it.) Anyway, here are some photos of some of our lovely blooms this year. Later in the season when all the flowering plants have grown, I will post more pictures in their maturity.




http://picasaweb.google.com/Anebo10/Flowers

Comments

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

There's no need to doubt that she'll have a wonderful personality to go with the ravishing external beauty that's appearing in outlines even now. I'm really touched by how serious you take the educating of your kids. My thoughts about a parent's responsibility are more in the New Comedy spirit (Menander, Terence, Plautus). As long as parents make their kids feel loved and accepted, give them air to breath and room to develop, establish mutual respect, and some set of rules to conform to, bend, and rebel against, they're doing an excellent job. With the possible exception of your father, every parent makes mistakes, but I think it's an important part of growing up anyway to slightly re-educate at the age of 17 or 23. I'm sure you and malkhos are great parents.

By the way, do you know how baby bats are called?

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

If I may say, Madeline does have a good personality--she's basically a sweet (though mischievous, independent, and sometimes reckless) child. I just hope she stays that way. Thank you for your compliments in regard to our parenting--it's the one thing I do worry about.

About my father--I cross-questioned Malkhos again after reading your post, asking him (because Malkhos can be very critical and will tell me if I demand it), "Am I wrong about my father?" "No," Malkhos replied. "It's your father's natural Stoicism which makes him what he is. He never studied Stoic philosophy, but he's always lived it. He's not bound to make major errors following Xeno and Epictetus." Malkhos paused and considered this. "Whereas I, on the other hand, could write an endless catalogue of mistakes my parents, especially my father, made." The look of disgust on his face was almost funny. But as I said before, that's his tale to tell, not mine.

I think baby bats are called pups.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

It goes without saying that I don't doubt M's good personality at the present time. Your "Let's see if we can keep her from becoming shallow as well", and then again: "I just want her to have an inner life too that is meaningful. That's the hard part" sounded overly worried to me and made me want to tell you: don't worry about her future.

(And as mentioned above, I do believe that parents are entitled to make mistakes.)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Okay, I won't worry anymore. :)

That's the problem with having such a standard of perfection set before you--first you doubt it, then you try to meet it.

I do agree, though; it's okay for parents to make mistakes.