I think I finished planting pots on my deck tonight.

 I’ve said that before—and then during a perfectly innocent wander through a garden shop encountered one more plant begging me to take it home. 

A couple of days ago, I gave in to a moment of weakness and loaded half a dozen more marked-down plants into my car.

In a previous life, I had lots of space for flowers and did lots of gardening.  I planted seeds, bulbs, perennials, bushes and trees. Really, my idea of a great garden is a mix of sunflowers, delphiniums, tiger lilies, daisies and all manner of flowers planted way too close together, blooming their heads off. 

That’s difficult to manage on a condo deck, but I’m always game to try. 

This is the first year I’ve had a blue hydrangea in a pot.  Or a sweet potato vine. 

I can’t plant great beds of flowers anymore, but I can add something I haven’t grown in a pot before.

Any mention of flowers brings to mind a multitude of colors.  I choose a variety, with a special liking for blues and purples, as they so often are especially fragrant—besides, my favorite color is blue. 

I plant reds, whites, yellows and oranges. But every season I avoid one particular color--pink.
For some reason, I’ve never been fond of the color pink… in clothing, in flowers, in home décor. 

I see women wearing pink, and I think it looks pretty on them—and it certainly looks sweet on baby girls and in sunsets.  But I usually avoid pink.

By now you surely are wondering why I have drifted off the topic of flowers and now am making an issue of the color pink.

Here’s the thing—I recently learned a small but significant lesson.  Perhaps you dislike a particular color—or something else--and you might appreciate the same lesson.

Renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly creates fantastic art glowing with brilliant saturated color. 
Recently, I read a book featuring Chihuly quotations, along with photographs of his work. 

Paging through the book, I came across a comment that caught my mind, enlightened me.
The comment? 

Simple: Dale Chihuly said he never met a color he didn’t like.  Further, he said he couldn’t imagine how ANYONE could dislike a color.  He seemed genuinely puzzled! 

And the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with him. I opened my mind toward pink! 
The lesson, of course, applies to all manner of things in life—certainly not only to color, to art.
What I learned, or at least was reminded of, is that it’s way too easy to dislike something (or someone) without any real basis for the negative opinion.

Thanks to that prompting by Dale Chihuly, my deck pots this summer include quite a few pink flowers.

I like them. I’m thinking I might buy a pink shirt.