That's right, John Keats popped into my head when I was standing in H-E-B trying to decide whether or not I wanted to purchase flowers. Yellowish pinky orange gerbera daisies, to be exact. One criticism I have heard about buying flowers is that they die so soon. And to this I make the Keats reply above.The other thing that popped into my head was one of the last really good memories I have of my great-grandmother, "Nano." On one of my visits to her apartment, I brought her a  boquet bouqet bouquet of flowers in her favorite colors. Nano, always one to be appreciative of beauty, oohed and ahhed for quite a while as I cut them and arranged them in one of her many old vases. She told me that my great-grandfather always said

"If it came down to it and I had to choose between a loaf of bread and a bunch of flowers, I would always choose the flowers."

I like to think that this love of beauty runs in my veins from my Nano and her husband, whom I never even met. It certainly seems genetic--my grandmother, "Mimi" would rather buy a painting than invest in anything "practical" any day.  And to think that it goes further than that, that the One who crafted the moon  and the stars and the sunshine and these gerbera daisies of ambiguous color...and us, for that matter...loves beauty as much as we do, and infinitely more.

So, basically, buying flowers is never a bad decision.