Flitting Right Along

Continuing along on what is becoming some sort of plant + bird theme... 

We (meaning the me's) are off on a damp Sunday morning stroll to Eastern Market, minding our own business: La la la traipse traipse  HALT.

We espy something curious growing in the far corner of this little garden and it tickles our fancy, one might say, because one cannot resist a serious dose of silliness mixed in with the proper.

First we're struck by the multiple colors, unlikely to appear on the same plant.  


Creep a little closer, we say to ourselves...go on...are those what you think they are? Mmmm hmmmm yes! We blurt and punch a self in the shoulder in glee. But it's so subtly done that it might be something else, something that actually grows from a branch -- because the branch is real enough.  

Yes they are feathers- a little bedraggled (remember the damp) -- giving wing to a pocket of early spring boredom, filling in for flowers still weeks from bloom.

Oh Frabjous Day!

The pittosporum WILL soon be in bloom!

See? Buds!

Maybe you think this should not be cause for celebration and exclamation and so on but the flowering of this shrub has been a hit or miss affair since we trotted it back from a springtime trip to Savannah some five six seven or maybe eight years ago. Could have been ten.

They have a scent that smashes you over the head so mightily that even the prince, who is odor blind, noticed it. Like orange syrup. Like a Disney fantasy of Florida (albeit one tragically without Carl Hiaasen). Like heat and sun and endless summer. Wherever you stroll in Savannah the scent of pittosporum curls its scented fingers and lures your nose to hover.... MMMMMMMMMMPF, you inhale. FFFFFFFFFFFT you exhale. MMMMMMMMMMPF ... and so on, into delirium. And then you grow numb with it all and have to lie down for a good bit. Or at least I do.

There's a Signpost Up Ahead...

Now this is exciting. It's some kind of viney thing embracing a signpost emblazoned with gawdawful No Parking and this and that signs and it's apparently being trained to weep -- twisting up the sign-stem and unfurling into a fine umbrella of a ....thing.

Last year this very same sign post was draped in morning glory, which was pretty damn glorious and I immediately swore to emulate this bit of genius as soon as the heavenly wheel returned to Spring.

Which it now has.

So last week I got me some morning glory seed, these pretty cool royal purple bordered in white numbers. I expect this will look quite flirty on the signposts that flank the alley that runs alongside our house; playing off our deeply purple front door.

Since morning glories only occupy that much of the day, for delirium in the twilight zone I got some moonflowers, which are --as would be expected -- white. If you've never whiffed a moonflower you're missing something. They're honeyed like jasmine but without the undercurrent of decay that (depending on your age, health, and the side of the bed you got out on) can be a bit unsettling. 

I soaked the seeds, as was suggested (though I promptly forgot they were soaking and there is this outside chance they might just...rot) and poked them directly into the ground.

Now we wait and hope that if they do emerge the prince doesn't determine that they're weeds and pull them.

Only a Fish in a Ferny Cage

I
I have not decided if this concept is fabulous -- or fabulously tacky. It doesn't much matter because I must have it, or something like it. It has...so many benefits, this cage with golden fish ornaments floating above a sea of fern. There's no bird dreck to clean, no half eaten dead fish to remove (little cannibals they are), and no fish or bird food to administer. Just stick the cage in a breezy corner (so the fish kinda swim see).  And it's SO GLITZY!!! WHEEEEEEEEE..............

It is tacky isn't it. Yeah, I thought so. Well... it's something to ponder for when the day comes that I remove my teeth and repair to a trailer in Weeki Wachee Springs.

Or somesuch.

Blight of the Apricot, Blooming of the Cherry

A rather large mistake is in the making. Serves me right for being so damn impatient, I say.

Oh, it looks pretty enough, the kwanzan cherry the Prince and I planted  several years ago to replace the apricot that up and died. It was good riddence to that, even if it screened our yard from the blight of new townhouses that went up behind our place and obstructed a clear view of the sky.

See, the apricot had a habit of prettily flowering and then spurting forth fruit, bushels of fruit, which you might think was very exciting and pleasant and tasty but was instead utterly disgusting and grew increasingly vile with each passing year.

It was here when we bought the house, approaching 27-years-ago, and weren't we thrilled that the skinny little sapling would eventually yield our very own apricot crop.

As it happened, just the summer before we'd been to visit friends in California and spent afternoons sitting stoned (or at least one of us was) on a deck plucking peaches from the branches of a tree that hovered deliciously overhead, sweet juices dribbling down our chins.

Clearly, we had a vision going here -- and didn't that apricot waltz right into the picture (funny what makes you buy a house, isn't it? It's all in the romance).

So we bought the house and watched the tree grow, fertilizing and fretting year after year when no fruit appeared. It never would, the tree experts informed us, because there was no other apricot in the vicinity and cross-pollination (or was it fertilization?) would never occur.