Pansies to Geraniums and Back Again

Pansies bloom all year in Norfolk. The first thing I noticed about Norfolk on my first winter visit here was the huge tubs of pansies everywhere. Then I became a Norfolkian and I bought pansies, too. They never die. However, in the heat of the southern summer, pansies grow leggy and scrawny. I've been looking more in sorrow than in anger at my pansies now for about a month. Time to send them into purdah.

Today I bought heavyweight, sturdy Geraniums and Black-Eyed Susans and Rudbeckia and Dusty Miller. Brought 'em home and watered them. Maybe tomorrow night if it gets a bit cooler, I'm going to plant my little pansy friends out behind the garage, fill the ex-pansy-planters with cow manure compost, and insert the new stuff. Poor dear, sweet little earnest, willing pansies. They didn't stand up to our brutal summer season well enough.

This fall after those geranium/rudbeckia/black-eyed susan/dusty millers croak, I am certain that behind the garage, my pansies will be getting ready to survive another winter in the south, not somehow, but triumphantly.