hens and chicks

I just realized that the cute little white border I put on this picture is useless with my white background. Oh well. This is a hen and chick plant (sempervivum tectorum)  in bloom. It's awfully pretty, but the blooms are not actually a great sign  - the plant flowers before it DIES. I think that just means the individual hen, though. Anyway - these are in a pot and too crowded so that's probably the issue. Why not go out with a bang? They're beautiful. 

ANYWAY. In book news, I'm still reading The Sisters about the Mitfords. It has been Mitford city around here - talking about it at work (it's for book group AT work), looking up Mitford pics on the internet, etc. What are you reading? Oh! I've also been listening to the audiobook version of a Rivers of London book. I'm so far behind on my reading challenge for this year I'm forgoing podcasts and listening to books while I tend to the garden, etc. It's so easy to download them from the library! 

artificial mystery flavor

1. Today was the Junior Rose Festival parade! It's the oldest/largest children's parade in the country, and it goes right by my work. I got to watch a bit of it from a great vantage point in the meeting room while we waited for meeting attendee #4, who got stuck in a parade morass and never made it. (He was warned but did not heed the warning! HEED IT, PEOPLE. It's all fun and games until someone gets stuck behind a pack of 4th graders on unicycles.)
2. 
   
3. this picture is from I don't even know when but I took it, I like it, I'm using it. 
4. I'm playing around with the numbers feature here. I don't like it all bunched together, so there may be some blank space.
5. or not.
6. 
   
7. I left work an hour early today due to incipient migraine. The weather has been whipsawing back and forth between bright/warm and cloudy/rain/cold. In either state my head is fine, it's just when it's moving from one to the other that I have problems.  I am having many problems this spring. 
8. I'm reading a book about the Mitford sisters called, strangely enough, The Sisters. It's SO DENSE and slow going, but totally enjoyable. Things are picking up now that the sisters are old enough to start having disreputable affairs and shocking politics. 
9. It's for book group.