Um... they're resting?

We had our first freeze last night, and the impatiens have given up the ghost. We had pots and hangers, boxes and beds of 'em; there was no point bringing them into the garage (or the shed! Mr. S. finished the shed!) to save them for the sake of another week. Annuals come, and eventually, annuals go. These are gone.

Backyard carnage. Sad, but wachagonnado.

Out of nowhere, the Peanut had a complete meltdown about it. She cried, and cried, and cried. "I don't WANT them to be dead!" she wailed, and "I wish flowers lived until PEOPLE were dead!" and "now every time Bean wears her doggie pajamas I'm going to think that the flowers are DEAD!" This last made me laugh, but it makes childlike sense because Bean's doggie pjs (pink fleece with a white scottie dog on the front) are for cold, cold nights - flower killing nights.

Holy cow, the kid was inconsolable. Neither sympathy, nor reasoned explanation, nor pointing out that the pretty purple asters are doing fine, had any effect. "I don't want to see them drooping!" she cried, surveying the carnage.

This from the child who last weekend single handedly pulled all the tomato and basil and pepper plants out of the garden by the roots - and boy was she proud of all that hard work! The tomatoes gave us all they had; we ate the last of them yesterday, and I was kind of sad. Flowers strike a different nerve, I guess.

Now it's 60 F and sunny, but she refuses to play outside. Too horrific.

I have parked her in front of a movie: Charlotte's Web, which is all about life and death and the natural way of things, more gently told than I can manage when she's wailing in my ear and getting snot all over my shoulder.