Bookish Gardener

I hope that someone gets my I hope that someone gets my I hope that someone gets my

message in a moblog. (Especially since the airwaves have eaten this post once already, ahem.) Came for Elvis, stayed for The Police. His Stingness was ON all night, Andy Summers even cracked a smile by the last encore, and Stewart Copeland has clearly discovered the Fountain of Youth in a drumkit. Tried to sing along with the few fragments of songs that I knew ("just like the / old man from / the book by Nabokov"). I learned that, even after all these years, I will never be able to not smirk at hearing the lyrics to "King of Pain". But a great show ! Now if we can only make our way through the tangled skein of ramp closures and detour signs to get onto the freeway home...

When the heat gets subtropical

(...and the talk gets so topical*)

The caladiums are happy in today's humid heat. I used to think that I didn't like caladiums. I'd seen them in too many desultory container plantings, where it seems that they could be swapped out with a fake fabric floral counterpart with no one the wiser. But a bargain-bin bag of a a dozen tubers came our way this spring, which I tucked in here and there in the north-facing shady garden. The spaethes are unfurling gracefully, some with a faint tinge of pink, and complement the minichromatic greens and white of this bed nicely. They might convincingly pretend to be a long-lost distant cousin of 'Jack Frost' brunnera, or of 'Beacon Silver' lamium.

*Gratuitous reference to a pair of lyrics from Elvis Costello's "Riot Act", on the occasion of hearing that he'll be opening for Sting [updated: The Police] in Milwaukee next week [updated: today (July 25)...and through serendipitous happenstance, I'll be in the audience].

Beauty by the off-ramp

Observed, this July morning, while waiting for the left-turn green light off the Rimrock Road exit: sky-blue chicory next to violet thistle next to ivory Queen Anne's Lace, with rust-colored seedfronds of dock for contrast, and egg-yolk yellow bird's-foot trefoil (the same weed that I can't bear to yank out of my lavender bed) lapping underfoot. It's beautiful!