Today is the day that drug dealer Laurie Pelot Gooch will learn what penalty she faces, as sentencing is announced for her crimes.

Behold the 5 year old, newly minted kindergartener’s first-ever piece of actual school work.

Her class is learning about the 5 senses, and her assignment was to draw a picture of herself, in which she was using one of the 5 in some way. So this drawing is of C, by C, and in it she is using her eyes to look up at the sky.

I snapped this photo last weekend of Mr. Butterfly enjoying some downtime on one of my cheerier looking zinnias. Mr. B and the flower were almost exactly the same shade of orange.

G really doesn’t understand why she doesn’t get to go to kindergarten with C every morning. In fact, she’s downright aggravated by the whole situation, which is why she has that look on her face in this photo I snapped of my two youngest just before the girls had to part ways for the day so I could take C to school.

Also, note G’s choice of daywear; it’s a nightgown. Mostly all she wants to wear of late are hand me down nightgowns from her two big sisters, along with her bright green rubber boots with toes in the shape of frog faces. It’s a good look, especially when she wears it whilst zooming hither and yon on her beloved red motorcycle. This morning, however, Jon seems to have convinced her to put on actual shoes rather than the boots.

Finding my own path to what what I describe as a sort of personal sanctuary has been an unexpected blessing in the wake of terrible pain and loss. And I now realize that too many of us – and parents in particular – deny ourselves that thing in our lives that centers us, settles our mind and spirit, and provides straight up joy. That something that’s just for us, and not necessarily for anyone else.

But we shouldn’t go without that. And that’s what I am talking about over in my latest post at Babble.

A lush stew of late August garden.

This is a stand of purple Angelonia – also called Summer Snapdragon – that I have growing just outside the gate. The purple variety of this plant has done much better for me than the pink – I have some of each in bloom now – but the pink has done pretty well also.

Angelonia is sold as an annual here in East Tennessee (Zone 7B). However, a very friendly neighbor who walks her dog past our house most evenings after work – which is when I am generally out puttering in my garden while the little girls play in the yard – swears to me that her purple Angelonia has come back for the past several springs. She says it hasn’t self-seeded like some annuals do, but has instead conducted itself as a true perennial, with no special effort on her part. I have to say that I remain a little skeptical.

But I do know that the nurseries can sometimes be wrong about where plants will take root as tender perennials as opposed to annuals. For example, my good pal John and his awesome wife Jane have an absolutely gorgeous garden here in Knoxville, and it includes beds bursting with beautifully blooming Pentas, which are supposed to be an annual plant around these parts. However when I was at his house drooling over his flowers earlier this summer, and all the Pentas in particular, John told me that they have always behaved like perennials in his garden. So go figure.

I’m curious whether any of y’all have grown plants in your gardens that werent supposed to re-emerge in the spring in whatever zone you’re in, but defied the experts and popped back to life anyway. If so, what plant was it, and where are you located?

I suspect that with climate change shifting all the USDA hardiness zones around, there are quite a few plants still being sold as annuals that will start behaving as perennials in parts of the U.S. where they have never survived winters in previous decades.

(Figs growing in New England, anyone?)

More details on the Vigil are published at KnoxViews tonight. Thank you so much to anyone who has already taken a moment to share information about this important event on Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere, and thanks in advance to everyone who still plans to help us get the word out.

-Katie