{"id":24411,"date":"2016-04-28T00:38:57","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T07:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=24411"},"modified":"2016-04-28T00:38:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T07:38:57","slug":"purple-rain-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/purple-rain-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"My Purple Rain Garden: Is the Universe Trying to Tell Me Something?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pansies<\/a>
Pansies so purple they appear\u00a0black — are they flourishing in honor of Prince’s ‘Purple Rain?’ Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Lots of rain this year. And lots of purple out in our front yard.\u00a0Purple nemesia. Purple irises. Purple salvia. Pansies so purple they read as\u00a0black. Why so much purple? What gives?<\/p>\n

\"Purple<\/a>
This iris had naturalized in our back yard and it’s doing great now in our front yard. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The\u00a0California drought has let up for the time being here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And in my front yard rock garden, along with the rain, has appeared a mysterious\u00a0phenomenon: \u00a0Purple flowers everywhere. Even the sepals on our otherwise orange abutilons\u00a0are mauvish right now.<\/p>\n

I didn’t plan it, and I don’t think the universe planned it. I’m too rational\u00a0to attribute mysterious coincidences to karma or to personal messages from the spirit world. But I do\u00a0feel obliged to\u00a0report, out of respect for\u00a0that most famous\u00a0of\u00a0Minnesotans, the late singer-songwriter\u00a0Prince Rogers Nelson, that my garden is\u00a0torquing\u00a0raucously toward the\u00a0purple side of the color wheel at the moment.<\/p>\n

All this purple is wasted on me. When the news came last week that Prince had died, I had to wrack my brains to recall the tune of his famous “Purple Rain.” I\u00a0was\u00a0the mother of two small, obstreperous kids back in the ’80s;\u00a0Prince and his music were no more than\u00a0radio\u00a0background noise at best — on the rare days that I\u00a0remembered to turn on<\/p>\n

\"Orage<\/a>
Abutilon with deep mauve sepals against our front fence. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"violet<\/a>
More pansies. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

the radio. To hear the CNN and NPR newscasters tell it today, however, Prince’s death has hit the pop music world like a tsunami.<\/p>\n

You’d think Elvis had died or something.<\/p>\n

More celeb stories at “Actor Robert Morse — Sweaty at 36, Sublime at 83.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also,\u00a0<\/em>“Heather Donahue — How I Got Hooked on a Pothead.”<\/a>\u00a0 Your\u00a0<\/em>Prince stories welcome — just click the Comments button at the top of this post.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Purple<\/a>
Columbine reseeded from last year. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"In<\/a>
Our salvia “Mystic Spires Blue” came up on the purple side of blue. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Pansies<\/a><\/p>\n

Lots of rain and lots of purple in our garden this year. Purple nemesia, purple iris, purple pansies. What gives? Is this a Purple Rain message from the spirit world? Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[895,1697,187,34,1698,403,405,82,958,1699,1700,1701],"class_list":["post-24411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-abutilon","tag-celebs","tag-death","tag-dont-miss","tag-elvis-presley","tag-flowers","tag-gardens","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-pansies","tag-pop-stars","tag-prince","tag-purple-rain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}