At least a couple of times a day, I pass these purple (or are they mauve?) flowers that our neighbor has planted close to his (and therefore our) front door. But what are they? My knowledge of botany extends far enough for me to assert with confidence that they are neither carnations nor roses, yet stops considerably short of allowing me to know what they are called. I am reminded of school trips decades ago where, field guide in hand, we had to identify plants by answering scores of questions from the book. I hardly remember anything I learned during those classes, and the book and I went our separate ways eons ago, so I am reduced to calling these flowers “purple daisies”, even though the word “daisies” conjures up white-petaled flowers with a yellow center.