...are still here; don't despair. Dahlias, asters, & chrysanthemums to name three are at many farmers markets in our area & most likely yours, as well. Or maybe you know someone who has some in their garden & would like to share. 
If you’ve been watching the western sky after sunset, you’ve seen the planet Venus. It looks eerily bright now – brightest in the evening sky for all of 2012! If you haven’t seen it yet, look outside shortly after sunset, and you can’t miss this planet. It’s an eerie light in the western sky. Venus’ brightness will surprise you if you’ve never noticed it before. ~ From EarthSky Tonight
We are running very late indeed, today. Here is little post run originally on bricolage last month. 
In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls, 
From Tiffin for Tea, Lorry for Truck by Reetika Vazirani (from her second book, World Hotel). The line is Fog owns the morning and you can't travel. We've had foggy mornings & evenings the last few days. The computer & GG's editor are still befogged, as well.. GG, though, is in top feline form. Hope to see you later. Please check out the Darfur news, here. (Foggy Barn by Vermonter Paul Moody)
By the sorely missed Yehuda Amichai. From Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems. If you have some time this weekend, it would be great if you would visit one of the humanitarian sites on this front page. Happy first day of spring...
*The title of a poem from Reetika Vazirani's last book (there might be one more). We used to recite it faster & faster in a race against the second-hand; she wrote it, she usually won. (Photo by wonderful Grant Hutchinson, more of his work here.) 
If only the hyenas were gone...enjoy their humbling while you can. It never lasts. The jackals prowl, the serpents hiss
In what was once Persepolis.
Proud Babylon is but a trace
Upon the desert's dusty face.
The topless towers of Ilium
Are ashes. Judah's harp is dumb.
The fleets of Ninevah and Tyre
Are down with Davy Jones, Esquire,
And all the oligarchies, kings,
And potentates that ruled these things
Are gone! But cheer up; don't be sad;
Think what a lovely time they had!
From today's Writer's Almanac. Thank you, Garrison. (And to Maria Caterina di Perugia who made sure we saw it, just in case. She knows we are often behind with our WA listening.)It was on this day in 1920 that the 19th Amendment was formally incorporated into the U.S. Constitution. It proclaimed, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." It ended more than 70 years of struggle by the suffragist movement.
It had passed through the House and Senate. At first, it looked like the amendment was not going to make it. And then, a 24-year-old legislator from Tennessee, Harry Burn, decided to vote for the amendment at the last minute because his mother wanted him to. And Tennessee became the 36th state to approve suffrage for women.
They sent the certified record of the Tennessee vote to Washington, D.C., and it arrived on August 26, 1920. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the proclamation that morning at 8 a.m. at his home. There was no ceremony of any kind, and no photographers were there to capture the moment. And none of the leaders of the woman suffrage movement were present to see him do it. Colby just finished his cup of coffee and signed the document with a regular, steel pen. Then he said, "I turn to the women of America and say: 'You may now fire when you are ready. You have been enfranchised.'
A nod to Garrison Keillor for his APR/NPR program The Writer's Almanac. We always seem to miss it on the radio in the early morning. So, we signed up for the email delivery & listen to it later. It's the most peaceful five minutes of the day.About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking
dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.