Violet

Carroll Gealy collects red African violets, blue African violets, pink African violets--but no yellow ones. "I couldn't get them to look pretty, so I quit trying," said Gealy, who will be carting many of her 150-plus collection of the colorfully flowered plants to Thousand Oaks this weekend. The 68-year-old Gealy, a member of the Thousand Oaks African Violet Society, will be at the club's show and sale at the Thousand Oaks Library.

She walked this very street, leaving her apartment in the 5600 block of Waterman Avenue, crossing DeBaliviere and skipping over to Hamilton Elementary School. Tracing the footsteps of one of this country's sporting giants, this is where the magic all began. Today the library in Hamilton is named after St. Louis' beloved Georgia Frontiere, the Super Bowl-bound owner of the Rams, the little girl who grew up to be a stirring role model for a whole new generation of kids.

I couldn't disagree more with your editorial "Massacre Valentine's Day" (Feb. 14). As a devoted husband and father for the last 15 years, I don't think it is asking too much to show our women on this one special day how much we care. (OK, my wife just left the room. Help! I am tired of spending $100 for roses I can get for $20 any other day of the year and waiting for two hours at a restaurant I can eat at the next day without waiting. Not to mention standing in front of the gift card rack for an hour looking for a card that won't get me in trouble.

Violet Weber Fashion editor Violet Weber, 94, fashion editor of the Los Angeles Times' Home magazine from 1964 to 1975, died Feb. 22 at a Los Angeles nursing home from complications of old age, said her niece, Sue Kirschman. Born in 1915 in Sugar Grove, Pa., Weber moved to California during World War II to work in the burgeoning defense industry. Soon she began working as a publicist for MGM studios. Weber's interest in women's fashion led her to The Times' Home magazine, where she was responsible for the publication's extensive fashion stories and photo layouts.

The home is filled with touches you might expect to find in a Greek cottage: rounded edges, sun-washed color, a burnished concrete floor. These touches and others have been used by Irini Vallera-Rickerson and Robert Rickerson to reinvent their Laguna Niguel tract home. The original 1,400-square-foot house has gradually been transformed from a '60s bungalow into a 2,000-square-foot Greek-inspired house that reflects the couple's love of Greece, architecture and contemporary art.

EARLIER THIS year, when Whoopi Goldberg posed on the cover of a national rock magazine flashing bright blue eyes, the public may have thought the contrast was a joke. But the people who manufacture colored contact lenses weren't laughing--they were getting ready for one of the most popular optical trends since Tom Cruise wore Wayfarers. A few years ago, market researchers came up with data showing that half the American population would like to change their eye color.

"God built me to last," Jackie Robinson says at one point in "42," and, thankfully, his remarkable story is built the same way. It would have to be to survive the full-dress Hollywood biopic treatment it gets in this film, which is unabashedly subtitled "The True Story of an American Legend. " And survive it does. You almost can't blame writer-director Brian Helgeland for taking an old-fashioned, earnest-to-a-fault approach to the genuinely heroic narrative of the Brooklyn Dodger who in 1947 - in a move masterminded by team General Manager Branch Rickey -- broke the Major League Baseball color barrier, led the Dodgers to the National League pennant and won rookie of the year honors.

It's as close to a gardening craze as you're likely to find, this sudden interest in genuine geraniums. Virtually unknown in Southern California, and seldom seen until a few years ago, avid gardeners are talking about them, and nurseries seem to have a new kind every week. "It's the flavor of the month" is how Robin Parer, who runs a geranium-only nursery in Northern California, explains their sudden popularity.

How could you not love a bean called lablab? Originating in Africa but cultivated in India since Neolithic times, the hyacinth bean ( Dolichos lablab ) has fed humans and livestock for millenniums. It's a drought-tolerant vining perennial that can reach 30 feet, ideal for covering a fence or a wall. It grows fast and comes in bushing, creeping and semi-erect varieties, many pretty enough enough to be used as an ornamental. The purple varieties have brilliant violet flowers and red-purple pods.