I still haven't spotted any deer with purple lips.

The way I see it, the low life deer that ate my Baptisia plant (aka False Indigo) yesterday would have purple lips since Baptisia has been used in the past as a source of dye.

The first deer I spot with purple lips is in for a world of pain.

I mean it.

I really, really mean it.

In other colour-related news, did you hear that last January two Johns Hopkins University scientists announced that the universe was pale turquoise? Yep, I just read about it in the June issue of "Harper's".

Being a child of the 1950's, I was kind of thrilled by that because turquoise was a big colour back in those years. I got a kick out of the thought that the universe was designed with a 1950's theme in mind.

THEN the article had to burst my bubble by saying that in March the scientists changed their minds and said the universe was beige.

Beige.

Does this not depress you?

It definitely depresses me.

It takes me back to my student days, when I lived in a series of shabby apartments and the only colours acceptable to my landlords were either white or some shade of beige. You know, something as nondescript and boring as possible.

The second we got our own home I immediately started to play with strong colours. There is no white, no beige and nothing that remotely resembles those colours on any of the walls in our home.

And now they tell me I'm living in a freaking BEIGE universe?

I am so depressed.

Still, there is a glimmer of hope. I heard on the news recently that scientists have just found another universe relatively close by us and similar to ours.

Hey, maybe it's not beige.

In the words of e.e. cummings:

listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go.