A carpet of moss is beautiful. Photos by Doug Oster

This is the time of the year I start getting calls on the Sunday morning radio show about moss.
When we see it in the lawn, it's an indication that the soil pH and fertility are probably off.

In that case, we get a soil test and figure out what needs to change and how to go about making the change.

But there's something else to consider. Moss is beautiful. My neighbor has Japanese garden and he tries hard to get moss to grow in between the plants.

If you take some time, getting down on your hands and knees, you can enjoy the amazing variety and beauty of the plant. If it was rare, we would work hard to have it in our gardens.

Love your moss!

I love to get down on my hands and knees to look at something as pretty as this moss.

I found this feather and some sunflower hulls under the bird feeder, laying on some moss.

These strange looking growths are one way mosses reproduce.

After more than a year of new initiatives gone wrong, CEO Ron Johnson is leaving J.C. Penney.  

He came to the 100-year-old-plus company from Apple with big ideas that were as radical to the retail world in 2012 as the iPhone was to the masses pre-June 2007.  A sampling of them, at random: replace by 2014 bar codes with RFID tags so customers can swipe their own merchandise, create dozens of in-store boutiques connected by "streets," ditch coupons and promotions for everyday-low price points, and pepper stores with food offerings, such as gelato and coffee stands.

One of the biggest blows came last month when it was announced that same-store sales plummeted nearly 32 percent in the fourth quarter, and a net loss of $552 million (or $2.51 per share) was reported for the quarter. Internet sales were $315 million, a 34.4 percent drop from the same time last year.

Despite the financial losses, J.C. Penney is blossoming on the fashion front with recent high-profile collaborations with designers such as Nanette Lepore, Duro Olowu and dress line Marchesa.  It also was recently announced that the store will launch later this month a jewelry bar featuring designs by top accessories designers, including Kara Ross, Kenneth Jay Lane and Diego Massimo.

Read more below from Bloomberg News about the dismissal and Mr. Johnson's replacement ... 

J.C. Penney Co. ousted Chief Executive Officer Ron Johnson and reinstated his predecessor, Myron E. Ullman III, as the department-store chain works to rebound from declining sales.

The changes are effective immediately, the Plano, Texas- based company said today in a statement.

The departure comes after a dismal first year on the job for Johnson, who arrived at J.C. Penney with great fanfare after building Apple Inc.’s network of stores. Johnson has been trying to transform most of the company’s stores into collections of boutiques and removing sales and coupons in a shift to everyday low prices.

The strategy failed to catch on, with sales in the year ending Feb. 2, plunging 25 percent to $13 billion, the lowest since at least 1987. Ullman served as J.C. Penney’s chairman and CEO for about seven years before Johnson took over.

J.C. Penney rose 1.4 percent to $16.09 at 5:22 p.m. in New York and earlier climbed as much as 13 percent after CNBC reported Johnson’s departure. The shares had dropped 50 percent from Nov. 1, 2011, the day Johnson started, through the close of regular trading today.

(Photo: Ron Johnson speaks to reporters in front of the central glass staircase in the Apple store on Boylston Street in Boston. Josh Reynolds/Associated Press)

This is the perfect time to plant pansies and violas. Photos by Doug Oster

Pansies and violas are usually the first "annuals" planted in the garden.

It's still going to get really cold some days, all the way up until mid-May, but these plants can take anything Mother Nature has left.

In my garden there are some fall planted pansies which have overwintered in containers close to the house. They look a little tired and will need a few days of good weather to really get them going.

I've added some new plants to make the containers pop.

Since pansies are cool loving plants, they will need lots of water and some shade as the season progresses. Mine usually give up around July fourth.

When that happens I'll head down to the nursery and substitute other shade loving annuals. By that time they have been discounted, usually half price. Those plants will thrive until frost and then I'll plant pansies again.

My fist planting this season was on March 15th, then again on March 30 and I planted some in the last couple days. I'll probably get one more flat to add too. Before I do that though, I need to figure out how my chickens are escaping their run. They love pansies, even more than a rabbit would!

The succession planting of pansies gives me color for a long time. Five months in the spring, Four or five more months in summer and then at least two or three more during the fall and winter. When you consider some will stay all winter, there's color almost year round.

I love playing with the color combinations, there are no wrong choices.

Pansies and violas are bright and cheery and get spring started on the right foot.

I got these pots on sale at a Rite Aid last fall, they were almost giving them away. The watering can was a Christmas gift from my radio partner Jessica Walliser. I love it!

Spruce up the entryway to the house with pansies and violas. They will benefit from being close to the house. They get protection from the wind and the warmth of the house will keep them happy when it's cold.

One lone blue viola in a sea of yellow. Doesn't it make you happy?

The fashion world said goodbye this weekend to one of its premier designers of the 20th century, Lilly Pulitzer.  For decades, she made a splash with her colorful take on floral and jungle-inspired prints, inspiring others to create clothes and cosmetics that burst with brights. (The iconic drugstore staple Great Lash mascara by Maybelline NY, for instance, attributes its bold pink and lime tube to the designer's fashions.)

Read more below about her life and legacy in an obituary by Jennifer Kay of the Associated Press:

MIAMI — Lilly Pulitzer, a Palm Beach socialite turned designer whose tropical print dresses became a sensation in the 1960s and later a fashion classic, died Sunday. She was 81.

Her death was confirmed by Gale Schiffman of Quattlebaum Funeral and Cremation Services in West Palm Beach. She did not know Pulitzer’s cause of death.

Pulitzer, who married into the famous newspaper family, got her start in fashion by spilling orange juice on her clothes. A rich housewife with time to spare and a husband who owned orange groves, she opened a juice stand in 1959, and asked her seamstress to make dresses in colorful prints that would camouflage fruit stains.

The dresses hung on a pipe behind her juice stand and soon outsold her drinks. The company’s dresses, developed with the help of partner Laura Robbins, a former fashion editor, soon caught on.
Jacqueline Kennedy, who attended boarding school with Pulitzer, even wore one of the sleeveless shifts in a Life magazine photo spread, and matriarch Rose Kennedy and one of her teenage granddaughters were once reported to have bought nearly identical versions together.

The signature Lilly palette features tongue-in-cheek jungle and floral prints in blues, pinks, light greens, yellow and orange — the colors of a Florida vacation.

“I designed collections around whatever struck my fancy ... fruits, vegetables, politics, or peacocks! I entered in with no business sense. It was a total change of life for me, but it made people happy,” Pulitzer told the The Associated Press in March 2009.

The line of dresses that bore her name was later expanded to swimsuits, country club attire, children’s clothing, a home collection and a limited selection of menswear.

“Style isn’t just about what you wear, it’s about how you live,” Pulitzer said in 2004.

“We focus on the best, fun and happy things, and people want that. Being happy never goes out of style,” she said.

In 1966, The Washington Post reported that the dresses were “so popular that at the Southampton Lilly shop on Job’s Lane they are proudly put in clear plastic bags tied gaily with ribbons so that all the world may see the Lilly of your choice. It’s like carrying your own racing colors or flying a yacht flag for identification.”

But changing taste brought trouble. Pulitzer closed her original company in the mid-1980s after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The label was revived about a decade later after being acquired by Pennsylvania-based Sugartown Worldwide Inc.; Pulitzer was only marginally involved in the new business but continued reviewing new prints from Florida.

“When Lilly started the business back in the ‘60s, she targeted a young customer because she was young,” the company’s president, Jim Bradbeer, told the AP in 2003. “What we have done is target the daughter and granddaughter of that original customer.”

Pulitzer herself retired from day-to-day operations in 1993, although remained a consultant for the brand.

Pulitzer was born Lilly McKim on Nov. 10, 1931, to a wealthy family in Roslyn, N.Y.

In 1952, she married Pete Pulitzer, the grandson of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, whose bequest to Columbia University established the Pulitzer Prize. They divorced in 1969. Her second husband, Enrique Rousseau, died in 1993.

“I don’t know how to explain what it was like to run my business, the joy of every day,” she told Vanity Fair magazine in a story in 2003. “I got a kick every time I went into the shipping department. ... I loved seeing (the dresses) going out the door. I loved them selling in the shop. I liked them on the body. Everything. There’s no explaining the fun I had.”

Pulitzer, who was known for hosting parties barefoot at her Palm Beach home, also published two guides to entertaining.

“That’s what life is all about: Let’s have a party. Let’s have it tonight,” she said.

(Photo: Lilly Pulitzer in March 1965 wearing and holding dresses she's designed. Robert H. Houston/Associated Press)