supermoon spider bites

I think a spider bit me on the face or near-face region last night during the SUPERMOON which seems like it should give me at the very least a minor superpower.  (do supermoons feel super at all now that they happen 3 months in a row, etc.?)  Nothing yet, I WILL KEEP YOU POSTED.

Zinnias are wonderful and no one will ever convince me otherwise. So if you've got some problem with them keep walking pal. 

RANDOM FOUR (OR FIVE): 

•I'm sad that So You Think You Can Dance is over for the season, for this was a very good season! I loved this take on the show and how it has changed for the better. The author of that piece has stronger feelings about Adam Shankman than I do, but I 100% agree about the fabulousness of Cat Deeley. She's the best! 

•spider season - I have to admire the optimism of the spider that builds a web across the front door every day. 

•this is the part of summer that is hard. It's still summer in spirit, weather, and fact but the days are getting shorter, the kids are back in school and wah. Winter is coming. 

•Finally watched Season 2 of Game of Thrones. I enjoy it, but it's really murdery.  I have to turn my head a lot. 

•I found a bunch of local garden blogs and am now filled with ideas and a sense of inadequacy! Woo! But I don't mind feeling inadequate to a task (some tasks, I should say)  - it takes the pressure off, somehow. 

Same Zinna picture but different.

and now to bed - I'm sleepy!

may is when the flowers bloom

WARNING: Megaton of photos in this post! For mother's day my sister and I took Mom to Schreiner's Iris garden. It was sunny and beautiful and a good time was had by all.


it was SO SUNNY that taking pictures in the normal way was not going to happen  - too much contrast, too much shadow. So I decided I would take sort of abstract flower pictures. I think this one looks a little volcano-like.


Deep water!


Lady bug hard at work. She flew away right after I took this.


This looks like a solar flare, or maybe like a monster with no eyes who has a really sweet disposition but everyone is scared of him anyway. (until he saves the day by with elaborate butter sculptures that fool the enemy, somehow. Haven't really thought this out very far.)


I love the ombre effect on this one.


I'm just mad about saffron


for $7.50 you could get a dozen cut iris. Each stem has around 3-5 potential blooms. WHAT A DEAL!


Peony peony peony peony. P-E-O-N-Y   F-O-R-E-V-E-R


foxtail lily detail. They really do look like foxtails when you can see the whole thing.


Hard working bee! (on an allium)


ridiculous ruffles. (I'm in a difficult typing spot right now because Otis the cat is trying to curl up and go to sleep on top of my arms. I have to push his feet off the keyboard...)

f
This should be some sort of airship/fighter in the new Star Wars.  pew pew pew  the pilot sits in the space above the orange stripe. It looks like it probably maneuvers well. GET ON THIS, HOLLYWOOD.


SPEAKING OF SPACE, these columbine in bud look like aliens and nobody can convince me otherwise.


Alien flower after it opens. STILL LOOKS ALIEN. Like, imagine if that was 4 football fields across and floating in the air while blasting historic/chronological songs of the summer over the city. Awesome, right?


Ambassador pink caterpillar heads down into the diplomatic sitting room.




RED POPPY!

good time vernal equinox

HELLO, SPRINGTIME.

I have news and announcements - first things first: Happy birthday to Martina!  Since we were born in the same year I can say this: Every birthday gets us closer to becoming wise women who hold the important cultural knowledge of our past, like the complete lyrics to Wham! Rap.

March has been a busy month so far - I got to meet Maggie - she's just moved back to Oregon and already knows the best cake restaurant in Salem! I know this because we ate some - I still think about that raspberry chocolate ganache. I briefly wondered if it would be weird at all to meet someone I knew only through email and the internet, but it was not! Maggie's lovely, her little dog is a sweetheart, and I'm so glad she's living close enough to visit in person.

In other news, I think I finally have an answer to why I have been so lethargic about this blog and life in general: not enough blood in my blood! Events of the last month led me to the doctor that I'd managed to avoid since I got insurance (last July), and she told me I was anemic and to start taking  iron supplements. I feel so much better! It's only been about 3 weeks, but I already have more energy, my fingernails are recovering, and the black circles under my eyes are fading away. Hurrah! Anyway - if you're feeling inexplicably logy, make them check your iron!

With that extra energy I took a walk on Tuesday and here are some of the pictures. I love springtime.




This is on the sidewalk in front of my house - the horse chestnut branches are getting thick and twisty like they do every spring. Soon there will be enormous bright green leaves and then white flowers.
(the sky was like this when I set out, but half an hour after I got home it was bright blue and you'd never know it was threatening rain like this just before.)




ha ha! looking at this now all I see are what look like dried grass clippings in the candytuft, but what I saw when I stopped to take the picture was GREEN, pops of purple, lacy white, and a line of hot pink fallen camellias at the top. Maybe I was just tired and wanted to stop. (this happens.)



I like how all the wires look like they're coming out of this yield sign.



This forsythia is aggressively cheerful and I love it. You're not going to miss that one.



CAMELLIA! I love how this looks against the white brick - I pretty much always love Camellias, especially in someone else's yard. (they are messy.) Anyway - this little vignette looked very fairy tale or story set somewhere else at the dawn of aluminum gutters to me.



Daffodils, man. They are so cheery without being as in your face as say, forsythia.



I'm sure this was to mark sidewalk or sewer repair, but I like to think someone wanted to make sure I knew I was going the right way.

compare contrast, then kitty cat

Photo taken on my phone, processed with the new flickr app for Android / iguana filter. I like it! I like the bowed white border - which you can't really see here because of the white background - and the sort of hazy Perfume Ad atmosphere.  These roses are CRAZY BEAUTIFUL and I love the vase that they're in. Roses and peonies had to be picked because it has been dumping down rain for a week.  This meant bouquets everywhere! Which is awesome, but usually doesn't get done because I always feel guilty cutting a flower. (obviously a personal problem I need to get over.)

Same picture with instagram / mayfair filter. I like Mayfair because it has a skinny border (which sets things off when you've got a white background) and that the color is fairly bright without looking too goosed up. This is close to the color of the actual flowers and vase, although there's a sort of white bomb in the middle of the filter that disrupts things a bit.



OTIS. My sister took the picture with my phone while I was holding him. He's pretty dang cute. (this is the instagram lo-fi filter.)

delphinium mania sweeps the nation

from May 29 - better late than never. I can't get over the color on these.


These delphinium (like so many flowers) look completely improbable up close. And yet here they are! (or there they were, since this blog post is at a remove of 2 months and some days)


Sort of like a delphinium spacecraft ready to launch back to its home planet.


spears and spires of blue lavender on a sunny day.