Although I had been trying to persuade some of my budding plants to bloom for Easter, just so I would have some flowers on the table and something besides phlox to welcome my guests on the pathway, the disobliging flowers refused. I had plenty of phlox in bloom, but otherwise a mere puny few pink flowers.
The day after Easter, the irises bloomed, presumably whispering to one another what a lucky escape they had had, not ending up in a vase. And the columbines also bloomed. These are the small, shy woodland columbines, though, so I guess I forgive them. They are like the pinks and the lamastrium, the backup singers of the garden.
It is the salvia, the 5-foot tall bright yellow columbines, the hollyhocks and centaurea, the snapdragons and hostas and hydrangeas that make a show in this garden. I wasn’t expecting any of them to show up in April. But I still think it was a bit spiteful for these guys to bloom one day after I wanted some early color.
Last night I got some knitting time at last, and I am getting close to the point where I was when I frogged it (“it” being M’s Jasmine sweater). Xanga will not allow me to show you a picture, for some reason, so you will have to take my word for it that it looks better than the first time around. I will try again later.
One of the things that #2 daughter and I were talking about while waiting for the bus on Sunday was Holland Codes. Richard Bolles, author of many variations on What Color is Your Parachute, introduces these in the form of a party.
You arrive at a party and find that people have sorted themselves into groups according to this classification model. You pick the group you would most like to hang out with. After 15 minutes they all leave, so you move on to your next preferred group. After 15 minutes, they all leave. Fighting down your feelings of paranoia, you move on to another group. The initial letters of the three groups give you your Holland Code. #2 daughter is an ACE, and I am an AIS, so I guess we are both aces. Here, among other places, you can find a list of the careers that will fit you according to your Holland Code.
Mine, even if I am willing to shuffle my letters around, are all things like teaching and writing which I already know about and do. It would perhaps have been more fun if I had discovered that I was suited to something I had never thought of doing — being a zookeeper or a mining engineer or something — but it is probably a good sign overall that I am already doing what I would expect to enjoy doing.
This book is a very good one for high school and college students who are thinking “whither?” Other books of Bolles’s are good for people in other stages of life who are still thinking “whither?”
And, since I am doing an entirely disjointed post this morning, I will also mention that today is the first anniversary of my completion of the Overcoming Agoraphobia program. I have to say that I still suffer a lot when I have to drive on scary roads, and I get prickly when I have a lot of appointments in a week (like, more than one). However, I can go anywhere I want. I make appointments, even if I don’t like it. I nearly always answer my phone. I make it all the way through my grocery list almost every week, and actually own a reasonable amount of clothing — well, okay, that one probably isn’t true. But I have improved a lot in that area, and actually bought clothing in a store on my own once this year. Okay, it was a bathrobe at Target picked up while waiting for a prescription, so that probably doesn’t count as shopping.
Ahem. I may not be much of a shopper or much of a driver, but I am better than I was before. And, since people with agoraphobia usually get worse over time, I really should think not in terms of how much closer I am to being absolutely normal, but (as with my weight and lipids profile) in terms of how much better I am than I would have been, had I not made those efforts.
Okay, I think I am now through rambling. Anyone who read this far, I salute you!
My flowers talk and sing, too. Did you know violas (Johnny Jump-Ups) are the social elite of the garden? You wouldn’t think so, with a name like that. But if you watch them, you will see, they sit and gossip about every other flower in the garden… Or did I see that in “Alice in Wonderland”?
You are making me think I’m becoming agoraphobic.
I think, after only 26 years of trying to get some idea of what I “want to do when I grow up” – that I’ve decided to go back to school and become an English professor. Of course, it has its disadvantages… like having to rack up more school debt… take undergrad classes that I didn’t take the first time around because I didn’t know I would be going into English.. oh well!
In our garden, it’s the roses that are the real social butterflies. They’ll lean over any fence to talk to the other plants. Love the irises!
Is there a category for “Easily bored and therefore wants to try everything at least once”?
Ag, agoraphobia. What a drag. Good on you for taking steps to overcome it. Sounds like it would be worse than my fear of heights. I try to climb ladders every so often to convince myself that it’s not that bad. I do hate shopping and appointments, however… 🙂
I talk the animals and birds more than to flowers I admit. I also occasionally chat with insects. Ok, Holland Code was interesting but hardly surprising. Worked out that I was ISA, looked up the associated career suggestions and found I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.
That’s totally not shopping. Shopping is thinking, “oh I love those new tailored shorts. I’ll go find an equivalent.”
or
“I have nothing to wear. What would Pokey do?”
the codes are interesting…
Thanks for your comments…In all honestly, I have been feeling a bit scared of posting more controversial items on my blog lately… I know I shouldn’t feel that way and I know I have a perfect right to post whatever I want on my blog, but still… one just gets tired of being told that one is a bad person and that one makes one’s friends cry. But again, thanks for your comments… it’s good to know that not everybody cries after reading my blog. 😉 That makes me feel a bit better and gives me a bit more courage.
You had me hooked with the flowers and lost me on the codes.
My irises are just now about 4 inches out of the soil, but no buds yet. I hope nothing eats them before they have a chance to bloom. They are poisonous to ingest aren’t they?
I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the columbines.
I was interested to see that “librarian” was first on the list of Baylor’s occupations-by-code, but that code–ACI–was not what I would have picked for myself. The code I picked for myself wasn’t on the list.
I think it far more likely that I misidentified myself, just because I don’t like to hang out at parties.